Ariel Pink

but MGMT have never had anything close to an American top forty hit.

yeah I know they did reasonably well on all those obscure tertiary charts, & those songs are still in rotation a lot, i.e. = pop hit for an indie act

jb otm

I thought I hated Ariel Pink but I realized that I just didn't need him, and most of the people I knew who were passionate fans I think were themselves goofy insecure musicians who felt more personally validated by his presence and acclaim than they actually felt moved by his music

There were parts of Pom Pom that spoke to me I guess

He came to my house once for a party, I'd never met the guy, he was a guest of some other people I'd invited. He ended up kind of holding court with my guitar on my couch and it was good! But then I ended up getting drunk and needing to sleep before people could leave. I woke up and all the lights were still on nothing was cleaned up and the front door was wide open and one of the showers was inexplicably on. I found Ariel's bank card on the ground outside and returned it to him later that day. It took me all day to clean up the mess

“pink's music doesn't really resemble anything that ever has been wildly successful or is wildly successful currently”

You mean pop music?

idk, the 'hold i'm coming' part of the chorus is good but it's not one of his best songs or anything

the 'everything's my fault" part is godawful

^ both of those are irrelevant to whether or not it could've become a pop hit

"Round and Round" is cool for what it is but when placed on a radio next to actually catchy songs its muddy dull and doesn't do much. Bowie actually wrote songs that could stand up next to other songs. songs with deep variety that still came a steady clip. for a decade straight. "Space Oddity" and "Fame" are like half a decade apart.

at any rate if this was a fantasy universe then can't we ask for someone better than Ariel Pink who perhaps wasn't appreciated as much as him in this universe

yeah... Joe Meek

round and round is def a popular song. i hear it every time im perusing the sales rack at urb outfitterz.

perusing the $28 new vinyl section at UO

nah man looking 4 those marked down sweat shorts.

According to spotify Ariel Pink has an average of 813,552 listeners per month against Julian Casablancas 203,700 monthly listeners.

Maybe tell Julian that nowadays Ariel Pink is at least 4 times more famous than him as a solo artist. That should make him happy.

"Witchhunt Suite" scratches that Before Today itch pretty well

Julian Casablancas solo or The Voidz? Solo he only made one album 8 years ago

"Witchhunt Suite" scratches that Before Today itch pretty well

― zlstrz (calstars), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 3:49 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true, which is strange, because it was allegedly recorded on the evening of 9/11/01

Ariel Pink is this generation's...Stephen Malkmus

Mankind is a nazi (Humanity’s the devil)

Just saw Tim on the street, said hi

Glad he’s back on his feet!

Yeah! He was wearing a red bell bottom suit so it seemed so!

https://open.spotify.com/track/0lzEmkwqePDPoau88C4VjJ?si=qeZKGB-BSsipLtWpbEB5nw

Part Time feat. AP - I can treat you better

heard Put Your Number in My Phone in a Whole Foods today. Sounded really good, AP's voice cut thru the din. I enjoyed reciting the phone call bridge with my friends. submit post

new old songs, probably will end up on Oddities & Sodomies vol. 2 this fall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYmy1OPFb-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtH5Q1K2ReE

Pink x Trux

I'll see your Pink x Trux and raise you one Ariel Archives

“new” Oddities Sodomites II thing on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/65JqQUlzflf9fsIZLjCfdp?si=stFt1gsoRVSZDQbacpZbQQ
Happy Friday

new reissues sound incredible

it’s like listening to them for the first time

Underground was a surprise for me. Each song an alternate universe hit. Reminded me of a something like Alien Lanes.

great interview with him and the engineer who helped dig up all the tapes and re-mix/master: https://www.weirdomusicforever.com/weird-news-and-interviews/ariel-pink-talks-ariel-archives

does anyone know how much of oddities is unreleased? i didn't recognize much. he seems to indicate that this volume and the next will have lots of new material.

bolivian solider as an example, is a brand new song done in his "old" style with mouth drums, etc. i can't get it out of my head. house of yesterday is also very strong.

was always a fan of Underground, so reissue is a treat. i'm struggling to get into Loverboy though aside from a few cuts.

it's impressive how much mastering guy was able to clean these records up; really opens them up

I think tracks 1-3, 5-7 and 13 are new. Gates Of Xion was a 2006 7", This Night and Go Go x2 were on the My Molly 7", Driving To The Grave is Underground era and was on some very limited tour CD (and was up on youtube for a while). Chart-Beep and The Law were on the I'm Not A Genius EP.

in that interview AP calls Bolivian Soldier "a sort of sister song to Are You Gonna Look After My Boys" and wtf now I love it
nah i loved it from first listen

I'm not that familiar with the remastered albums out now (only Underground and Loverboy right?) but I did check out a couple songs from Loverboy, like the title track, and I think something was lost. The songs are less dense now, more separation. w/e, both mixes exist

Very pleased with the outcome of these remasters - the results kind of belie the idea that he was trying to make things sound as shit as possible. It's like listening to the actual 8-track tapes (plus compression)

xp — I agree about Loverboy (my favorite). It's novel to hear the songs sounding so clean, relatively speaking, but the way the songs leapt out through the crud, lifted up from within the murk, had been part of that album's sonic signature. As with a lot of remasters, though, if you never heard the old version I'm not sure you'd really feel like you were missing anything. While they're a whole other analogue (rock, golden) ball game, some of the Stereolab reissues this year have been like this, too. Anyway, some of Underground is still hella noisy.

I appreciate the liner notes on the new reissues. They're not extensive and only say a little about the music itself, but they provide some interesting background. I didn't know he was at the center of a sexual harrassment suit regarding a piece he did at CalArts, for which he says he will probably best be known (!). That remark seems to partly explain some subsequent behavior, an attitude that he will never be properly recognized for his work no matter what he does... which he takes to mean he might act out his id anyway, with at times disastrous results.

Wow, any more details on that lawsuit? Here's another:

Ariel Pink has been hit with a lawsuit from director and actress Kansas Bowling, who claims Pink hired her to make a concert film last month and then failed to pay her. Pink owes Bowling more than $1,500, according to a small claims action filed on October 18 in a Los Angeles County court and obtained by Pitchfork. “I was hired by Ariel to go on tour with him to film his shows,” reads the complaint by Bowling, who was not represented by a lawyer. “When we got back, he said he didn’t want the video anymore, therefore he didn’t have to pay me.”

The complaint alleges that Pink owes Bowling $1,560, stemming from events that took place from September 18 to 21.

Bowling told Pitchfork in an emailed statement: “All I’m asking for is the amount promised to me for a job I already did. I went on tour with him and filmed four shows.... I have to take him to small claims for this lousy, already-discounted rate I gave him so I can eat and pay my rent!”

Ariel Pink has been officially served documents in the case, according to L.A. County court records. A non-jury trial in the case is currently scheduled for January 3, 2020. As of publication, a representative for Pink has not responded to Pitchfork’s requests for comment.

Kansas Bowling is the director of the 2016 film B.C. Butcher, as well as numerous music videos. As an actress, Bowling played the Charles Manson follower Sandra “Blue” Good in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood.

https://pitchfork.com/news/ariel-pink-sued-by-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-actress-over-scrapped-tour-film/

lol what a douche

surprised underground got reissued, by far his least listenable and least tuneful, not sure what he felt was worth salvaging there

Scared famous

When is the next batch out? Can it happen before he gets cancelled

they're reissuing all of his old albums through 2020, similar rollout I think as the Stereolab reissues. I agree that Underground is mostly dross aside from My Molly.

One thing that the remixes/remasters also highlight is how beyond repair some of his sounds are. I actually think the separation and 'cleaning' of the stems emphasizes how distorted and fucked they were, like PaulMTA said upthread.

for what it's worth, I tried to get a tape collage of mine mastered recently and the results were very similar: sterile separation and elements popping out that shouldn't have, and also irreversible distortion being highlighted.

xp I think in early 2020. AP has been cancelled so many times he's in a Trump sort of space, there's so much evidence of him being, at best, an asshole, and at worst, an emotionally and physically abusive drug addict. so it's all sort of a wash.

TS: college vs collage

all the stuff that came out during the last album cycle (all the stories of him kissing fans at shows without consent for example) has pushed him well beyond mere 'asshole' territory in my view so it's hard to have any interest in his stuff anymore

though i'm impressed that these reissues are making his already incomprehensible back catalogue even harder to understand - underground now has a significantly different and expanded tracklist from the previous release, and they're still reissuing the albums out of chronological order (but a different order to the previous widespread releases)

from what i remember underground was near unlistenable and the only two truly worthwhile albums from his lo-fi period were house arrest and the doldrums. the rest all had their moments but were bloated and inconsistent and mostly just curiosities

no worn copy and house arrest were pretty perfect too

Loverboy I mean

Scared Famous, in certain configurations, is one of his best.

Wow, any more details on that lawsuit?

Pink and another student did a large pencil collage in which they depicted students, staff and faculty having sex, and the lawsuit alleged that it had created a hostile working environment; CalArts won the case on the grounds of a non-censorship policy, though Pink was made to apologize. Looks like the court brief is here.

5.  The drawing was the students' response to an art theory that characterized representational art as passé and incapable of evoking a strong response.   See footnote 11, below.

11.  In their declarations submitted in support of CalArts's motion for summary judgment, student artists Ariel Rosenberg and Jeremy Ringermacher explained the motivation for The Last Art Piece:  “At CalArts, there is a tendency when art is critiqued to categorize a work as representational or conceptual.   Representational artwork is an actual representation of the item depicted.   Conceptual artwork goes beyond the actual item depicted and communicates additional ideas and concepts.   During the time that I have attended CalArts, faculty and students have debated the impact of representational art versus conceptual art, and some people have characterized representational art as passé and incapable of provoking a strong response.   Ringermacher and I decided to create a piece of art that mixed and confused these two concepts and evoked a critical response.”   In his letter of apology to Herberg, Rosenberg stated “I never intended to harm anyone.”

12.  The context in which the alleged harassment took place also supports our decision.  (See Fisher, supra, 214 Cal.App.3d at pp. 609-610, 262 Cal.Rptr. 842.)   We see a vast difference between posting obscene cartoons in a men's room, as was done in Bennett, supra, 845 F.2d 104, and the display of The Last Art Piece in the designated gallery area at an art school.   CalArts's non-censorship policy was widely distributed to both students and employees.   In our view it was reasonable to expect that exhibitions of student artwork would, from time to time, include sexually-explicit material. Although we reject CalArts's contention that its anti-censorship policy and the First Amendment exempt it from the laws against sexual harassment, in this case the context of the display further militates against a finding of severe or pervasive harassment.

I dont agree with Underground as being 'unlistenable' at all - to my ears seems like a consistent set of melodically inventive damaged pop songs in the vein of Syd Barrett/ GBV etc