John Maus

Hell yes, new album rules. IDK if it's actually better than his last records but it's easily my favorite thing he's made.

Maybe it's because the production is better. Thinking why I had a hard time connecting with previous records of his, the production was probably it

Also the RA review suggested that the current political climate (of horrors) is a better context for his style of music, and it does feel like a timely record

his AMA is predictably good reading https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/8jp4qx/im_john_maus_ama/

Thanks for that

Follow your nose, philosophize with your nose! Wikipedia, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Beginners Guide comic series, The Giants of Philosophy narrated by Charlton Heston--things like that. They'll all give you the standard caricature, e.g., "Hegel is about the acorn becoming an oak", stuff like that... Then, smarmy, uptight, grad-students with no love in their hearts will kick you in crotch (and do it speaking perfect French) when you try to weigh in on the basis of that knowledge so you'll read each of three critiques from cover to cover carefully underlining everything that is important, you'll keep reading, reading it all, always the original book, always from cover to cover, and then when smarmy grad student comes to kick you down you'll just feel bad for them... They'll say something like, "Yeah, I wrote an essay about how I want to make out with Walter Benjamin." And you'll say something like, "Huh? You know my brother just got down slugging through the Arcades Project, have you ever read that one?" And they'll say, "Yeah, I think so..." Then, you'll think to yourself, 'geese, it took my brother several weeks to slug through that several hundred page collection of fragments and aphorisms, it's something I don't think he'll ever forget, and here this person is telling they're not even sure if they read it! Damn, I guess I won't even bother trying to dialog about On Language As Such and On the Language of Man, even though the profound insights contained in that essay illuminate the truths contained in the story of the fall in ways I haven't even begun to unpack, because this one I'm talking to now is no good.' Then, later, you'll be in New York City and you'll politely try to make conversation with someone standing there, and you'll ask them: "What do you do?" and they'll say "I work for an art collector" and you'll say "cool, what sorts of art are you into?" and they'll say "well, right now, I'm into garbage" and you'll think to yourself 'how many of these robots are there?'

:D

The new one didn’t click with me at first but I just gave it a re listen and it’s excellent. Maybe a little more low key than Pitiless, which I think is his best. Love his synth tones.

his AMA is fantastic lmao, exactly what I'd expect

has anyone else listened to Addendum yet? I'm enjoying it a fair bit more than Screen Memories

Really sad news: https://pitchfork.com/news/joseph-maus-john-maus-brother-and-bandmate-dead-at-30/

wow, that's horrible. I hadn't realised that was his brother

I wonder if he got hit by the viral lung thing going around Europe -- it's apparently really dangerous because the symptoms are pretty mild.

He has gone full Maga and was at the 'protests'

https://www.clashmusic.com/news/it-looks-like-ariel-pink-john-maus-attended-the-washington-dc-protests

I can’t say I’m entirely shocked by this after the Adult Swim fiasco but this nonetheless makes me feel a bit sick. Pink has always been beyond the pale politically but this seems pretty desperate for both of them.

I love Maus’ stuff and this just sux

"welcome to the panoptigan" tweets pink. "panoptigan", jfc

https://t.co/OXAVV9jk2d

— John Maus (@JOHNMAUS) January 7, 2021

pic.twitter.com/ejXD5DKHq6

— John Maus (@JOHNMAUS) January 7, 2021

god that's an annoying, pretentious, opaque way to try and defend himself

i knew so many guys like this dude in grad school, always covering their asses by gesturing like mysterioso postmodern oracles to cover the fact that they were just lazy middlebrow dilettantes

I mean by partaking in that riot/insurrection Maus is hypocritically exalting Donald Trump. What a hypocritical and sad attempt at some form of defense. Kinda want to throw my copy of Screen Memories in the trash now.

Also tweeted a photo of Edith Stein, who was killed at Auschwitz. After attending a riot with Nazis.

i knew so many guys like this dude in grad school, always covering their asses by gesturing like mysterioso postmodern oracles to cover the fact that they were just lazy middlebrow dilettantes

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Thursday, January 7, 2021 10:35 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not sure it's very pomo to cite piux xii

heart to heart, mind to mind

xp ha fair. theres a long list of things that tweet is 'not very'

god that's an annoying, pretentious, opaque way to try and defend himself

Par for the course. From a Vice interview when he was asked about the Adult Swim fiasco:

...a few months later or whatever, one of the people from the label was like, “Yo, did you see this? You gotta say something.” “They’re Nazis,” or something like that.

Shit. A cult of a race and blood—that’s an absolute obscenity. That’s nothing other than disaster. That’s just inarguably obscene, that sort of ideology.

If the question too is why not just throw in your two cents about it or whatever, it’s just so insanely complicated the way the biopolitics and the cults of race and blood, the residues of that, are rearing their ugly faces again in our situation. That’s too complicated a thing to try to touch with [140] characters without running the risk of just turning the screw.

I don’t want to make any apology, but I also didn’t want to… The guys I met were nice. They weren’t burning crosses or doing anything like that. In other words, I never had, from what I know about it, any indication that anything other than certain instances of a sort of trolling was going on. What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it. Or why were they alt-right people?

When he was asked about one particular sketch:

The one I was on, there was a sketch at the beginning of it where these guys are sitting at a wine-tasting party or something like that, and their wives are there, and they make a point of the character—one of the wives is off-putting. She scowls and things like that. One of the guys trips her, and she falls through glass, and it tears up her face, and she’s bleeding.

Now immediately, I’m thinking of "Metalocalypse." I’m thinking of phantasmagorical humor, like a person gets their arm ripped off or something, and there’s something absurd about that. I didn’t think much beyond that about it.

Then people were like, “This is a misogynist sketch.” Then in that sense I’m thinking of the French feminist theory, this whole reading of it from that standpoint: the men do not acknowledge the woman as an agent, as having any subjectivity. She’s just an object in their patriarchal economy. In that sense, it’s like a feminist critique of where a woman is made to stand in a patriarchal, heteronormative reality. The idea that it just encourages violence against women, maybe I’m just too dumb. I didn’t see that or something like that. I don’t know.

ay ay ay. please fuck off john you total wank

"maybe I'm just too dumb" following a long equivocating non-apology....classic bullshit move

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n35wAjB_u78/T1G-sL_peBI/AAAAAAAABJc/UZc0x2bI0M8/s400/Caveman+Lawyer+Jury.png

What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.
What did they do that made them Nazis? Maybe I haven’t looked into it.

well uh I guess based on recent developments “cop killer” makes him pretty consistent.

my guess is when he eventually gets pressed further on this, he'll deny any support for trump & denounce him further in a convoluted manner, explain that he "has his disagreements with ariel" and that he was just observing & not participating in the protests

i don't think he's sincerely a trump supporter or anything like ariel is, just very stupid about this sort of stuff as he has been in the past, which is enough to make me say "come on dude"

That's the most waffling, arse-covering, disingenuous reading of that Adult Swim sketch. The woman isn't 'off-putting' she doesn't 'scowl and things' she's considered too unattractive to marry the guy's brother, he says so and then trips her up deliberately. It was revolting and anyone with any sense called it out at the time. 'Feminist theory'?? What a complete arsehole.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-raging-battle-over-adult-swims-alt-right-tv-show/508016/

guys like this just think they are so interesting

I forgot that Brett Gelman quit Adult Swim because of that show, as well as the network's poor track record on working with female talent... that was pretty cool, and somewhat ahead of the game.

John Maus was radicalised by this post pic.twitter.com/XwC79T2ZhD

— All Watched Over By Machines of Drum and Bass (@bartlebooth45) January 7, 2021

Lol that was so satisfying after that overwrought and pretentious explanation.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91p17bGVEXL.jpg

In case anyone was wondering, I'm a lifelong supporter of Antifa. Like most of us, I was appalled by what we saw in DC this week and by the people present there. In response to this DSA and Night School Records have decided to release a 7” single of my original song Hey Moon (2008), with ALL PROFITS from the sale donated to BLACK LIVES MATTER worldwide.
Pre-orders available now and shipping as soon as we have them (approximately 10 weeks from the moment I type this). Pre-orders from DSA online shop or Bandcamp available now
Molly Nilsson, 2021
https://mollynilsson.bandcamp.com/album/hey-moon

worthless VHS idiot JOHN MAUS #neverforget

Most tedious thing said by worthless VHS idiot JOHN MAUS in p4k interview

don't wanna be the poster boy for the unintended effects of so-called cancel culture but I'd never heard of this guy before the Trump shit last week and then this revive in which he comes off like a total douche but I was curious so I checked out some of his music and really liked it in spite of myself

not gonna buy any of his albums or anything though

We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves is a bona fide indie-synth albun and I think that's why this is hurting us all a bit. As you say though, he's never come across as a super-great dude though.

"bona fide classic indie synth album" I should say

I had "Believer" at #2 in my tracks list for 2011, the only year I ever put a top 200 together, the rest of the LP was less good but still annoyed that it feels tainted now.

We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves is a bona fide indie-synth albun and I think that's why this is hurting us all a bit.

yeah that's the one I randomly sampled, hoping I'd dislike it as much as I have always disliked or at least been indifferent to Ariel Pink, but I couldn't really deny how much I immediately liked it.

yeah i still love that album, it's not like ariel where i wrote him off as intolerable years ago and this hasn't changed that. i'm disappointed but it's par for the cause with him being buddies with ariel. if he fully commits to the sort of shit that ariel has then that would probably be exhausting enough to be done with him though

he's mostly come across as a pretentious fool though in general, and this is just an extension of that. there's a weird disconnect though because he's always going off on elaborate philosophical tangents in interviews and you can tell he deeply thinks and cares about what he's doing in his art in that vein but that pretentiousness doesn't really come across at all in his music which is fairly minimal both musically and lyrically. like maybe it's possible to find the classical composition techniques he deeply cares about in his music but it's not something that's particularly obvious.

as far as him coming across badly in the past, not just as a fool, there's this strange piece (somewhat like an interview but not really) https://www.adhoc.fm/post/re-dear-john-maus-how-are-you/ where he says that "bennington" is autobiographical and proceeds to share his deeply weird & somewhat creepy email correspondence with its subject. that section is near the bottom after some walls of text on other topics.

"Quantum Leap" is a good song but I always thought his live sets looked stupid af

Someone on his Facebook fan group has uncovered evidence which appears to show that Maus has donated to Sanders, Yang and Trump in the last 12 months

lol

He loves politics, all of it!

poisoned galaxy brain