Ariel Pink

there is so much sadness in this album. it's haunting... the mood swings just within "Sexual Athletics," the 'sex king' rock strut pose, the delusions, then the xylophone section... "all i wanted was a girlfriend all of my life" ...

AP is playing the heel to promote this album, he's doing Ann Coulter and it's working.

My good friend knows AP very well. I told him to tell him to take it easy with these wacky interviews, he's getting people angry and my friend laughed and said "he doesn't give a fuck."

yeah the whole thing has the queasy end of the world feeling to it. just totally baffling. even the joke songs sound totally menacing

I mean, we're not likely to see AP live another 10 years, it feels like.

I had a dream he did UK Celebrity Big Brother last night

the first half of this record is much better than the second imo, when he goes all zappa-ish. (except for Picture Me Gone and Dayzed Inn Daydreams, which are good too).

also, was he married to porn star Alisa Daniels?
or is it just the same name..

I'm blown away by the samples on this. The Gremlins theme song in Dinosaur Carebears is my fave. And what in the fresh hell is the source of that excited gibberish at the end of Negativ Ed??

Is it too soon to call this AP's 'Trout Mask Replica'? It probably is, yet I do think ultimately this is the case.

No small feat to return to your lo-fi roots after two hit 'hi-fi'-albums and turning everything inside out again. I still don't love nearly half of the cuts on here, but can already feel the lure, knowing I will love them soon. The easy to love songs just pull you in, and then there's no way back but to love the shit out of this.

Another thing- The sound recording on this album is really really good. Haven't heard an album mixed and engineered as well as this in long time.

still haven't heard it but yea even the doldrums or worn copy have ton of crap on them, but for me the crap is all part of the big picture imo with this dude. i am worried though that i know too much about AP now that might affect how i hear it. not talking exclusively about the sexist dumbfuckery that he spouts all the time, i mean that's part of it for sure, but more just that i think i kind of enjoyed his music more when i didn't know too much about him, that he just seemed like some anonymous weirdo savant putting out all these bizarre muffled lo-fi pop songs contributed more to the whole "haunted graffiti" aesthetic, with these songs all being these ghost shells of 60s, 70s, and 80s pop hits i heard on the radio growing up. i still appreciate his general zappa-esque quirkiness but tbh some of those older albums, before i knew much about AP, creeped me out in a way that was really interesting and intriguing.

i mean "before today" is really good but i never identified with all the "wow AP finally puts these songs through some proper production and makes his definitive album!" bullshit. the fact that so many of the early albums were half-finished songs, shitty recordings, etc. was always part of the picture for me. those early versions of "round and round" are creepy as fuck, and yes they are not the pop masterpiece that "round and round" ended up being but their rough qualities served an aesthetic really, really well. that aesthetic was always the most intriguing part of AP imo

but this

No small feat to return to your lo-fi roots after two hit 'hi-fi'-albums and turning everything inside out again.

It is not Trout Mask. Let's not exaggerate.
It does somewhat return to his lo fi roots with the main difference that he is much more confident and less humble (and that's a disadvantage imo)

http://i.imgur.com/E4GyEbj.jpg

those covers are amazing.

pom pom is hi-fi according to that chart

or higher-fi anyway

that chart is bullshit

maybe it's a "beginner's guide" in the sense that an aspiring professional guide maker made it

pom pom sounds like it was recorded not too differently to the previous one, just mixed to sound like a 5th generation cassette

Not saying it is Trout Mask Replica, but it is [his Trout Mask Replica. The epic culmination of AP in his Todd Rundgren 'Wizard, True Star' phase, going all out, not caring about reputation. This is that album. It's certainly not flawless, far from it, but he certainly seems to have followed his gut instinct, instead of easily going with the band and current success. He didn't choose the easy way out, and instead did what he wants to do. I applaud that.

So many sound effects and hidden treasures. "Not Enough Violence" is an incredible, incredible song.

"Dayzed Inn Daydreams" made me choke up earlier....

I think comparing it to "A Wizard, a True Star" is more apt than "Trout Mask Replica".

just noticed the reference "A Day in the Life" in "Exile on Frog Street"

"Picture Me Gone" reminds me of Magnetic Fields

also, was he married to porn star Alisa Daniels?

In that New Yorker blurb-file he says he is dating a porn star who used to be on Charlie Sheen's bench.

He was definitely married to an Alisa though, per his classic song - "Alisa"

I understand the arguments and disappointment from people who crave the "mystery insane dude cranking out lo-fi tapes of 60s/70s/80s pop ghosts," but I'd rather have both because I think AP is a brilliant songwriter. The aesthetics and the recording quality can't mask a shit song.

In that New Yorker blurb-file he says he is dating a porn star who used to be on Charlie Sheen's bench.

hope someone washed that bench before sitting on it iirc

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/533-who-said-it-ariel-pink-and-glenn-beck-face-off-out-of-context/

this the guy anointed by sizable portions of the hipsterati as the new frank zappa huh, tf did zappa do to deserve that

Also lol at Ariel Pink being on the same planet as Zappa as a musician, composer, and arranger. I say that as a lukewarm Zappa fan at best.

it seems to alternate between FZ and basically any psychedelia merchant of yesteryear

i don't quite get the zappa comparison

zappa was an intellectual and a muso who seemed intent on proving that, ariel pink seems more of a self-conscious primitive (which zappa tried to be on some occasions)

i guess the connection is that both do "pastiche," and have a number of musical personalities. and that's true, but in very different ways.

can't wait for the Twitter police to get really tiffed over that article.

"wow people like this ariel pink person? why i never!!!!"

ariel has more of a pop heart than zappa. i think a better comparison would be Pollard. class melodicism put together in shambles

Sounds like the Tubes to me. Or Bobby Conn.

yeah i think pollard is a much closer comparison

bobby conn--ouch. i never got that guy's appeal. and he was everywhere in chicago ca. late 1990s.

he seemed like the archetypical hipster musical poseur to me.

uh i mean archetypal

man let it never be said that this dude doesn't have a deeeedicated fanbase who will bend over backwards to find bonafides for him

all for the man who wrote schnitzel boogie

yeah i like much of his music but some of the fawning on here seems over the top

I gave that record a listen and it's as good as most Zappa I've heard, I get the fawning praise. Luckily Zappa's the worst, so

Not down with people saying how great it sounds. The sound quality on this is poor compared with whoever people are comparing it too upthread - Rundgren, Zappa, Tubes, whatever. Listened to it last night really loud on a fantastic system and it sounded like flat, bombastic computer music. He's transitioned from one form of shitty sound quality to a different, more subtle form of shitty sound quality.

bobby conn is cool

those covers are amazing.

― Raccoon Tanuki, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 6:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/Lover_Boy.jpg

yea that chart was dumb as fuck, about as dumb as the term "hypnogogic pop" and other bullshit wire-isms, but yea the covers are pretty amazing