Sadly, it happens sometimes that a session gets unintentionally buried and shuffled around and we can't stay out ahead of band rumblings and dynamics and said band dies on the vine, just as they were beginning to see some good things happen to them. So is the case with Los Angeles band Mika Miko, a group that came of age and began catching steam as the Smell in L.A. was all the rage and groups like HEALTH and more were gaining notoriety in freaky and more standard music circles. The unwashed set was taking notice and the aggressive and agitated sounds of pissed off ladies and snarly guitars was ripping holes in jeans and tearing the elbows out of shirts. It was a wet and slobbery kiss that doubled as a bitch slap from a band of rough-around-the-edges artists just looking to stir it up as sweaty and as crazy as they possibly could. The band called it quits shortly after the completion of the tour during which this session was recorded in the summer of 2009 and it's here that we're able to hear one - if not the final recording the band ever made - showcasing the band's snottiness and its scruffiness at its rawest, in a live setting that it was best known for.
Last night (Friday midnight of October 14th), it was heavy raining but I decided to head up to couple places for several music. Well, several kinds of, several genres of music. One venue in the midnight time in Allston, at new house venue called Halfway House, I saw two Brooklyn bands called "Little Gold" and "ABADABAD" touring over to Boston with two of my friends as well as my favorite Boston bands "Mutual Benefit" and "Streight Angular" up there. I found myself how much I love underground but I have to get more much major music in the world as well. It wouldn't be like... intentionally "hates" if I have hated these majoring music without notice, that I hope. That realization was one because of this band from Brooklyn, NY, Little Gold. Here the thing I found themselves afterwards. Cause I missed a chance to grab their vinyls in person from them after the sweet but really rocked sounds of their performance in the long squared space basement.
ブルックリンのバンド、リトル・ゴールド（Little Gold）はスリーピースのバンドで、その存在を我々に疑わせつつも正体不明な -- 正にあの胴体をすり抜けるタイプの -- 存在として気配を感じさせ、くすぐらせてくるようなあの手のゴーストが出てくる映画を連想させる様な楽曲を書くバンドである。気取らずに聴ける自然と心に入ってくる、そんな音楽である。スーっと入ってくるのである。（今回のセッション楽曲の一曲）「ハーフ・ザ・タイム」（"Half The Time"）という曲なんてまさに、このトリオが持つ多くの楽曲群で特にスーっと入ってくる楽曲を選べと言えばこの曲といわんばかりにヒットする楽曲である：例えるなれば、シャープに炸裂するガレージポップが時折頭を突き抜けて夢想する感覚すら覚えるほどで、それは完璧なるまでに自然に巻き起こるのである。それは唯一の救い、みたいなものかも知れない。彼らの楽曲はベッドで多くの時間を費やしているか、もしくはそう夢想しているかの様で、すべて心地よくほんわかしていて、日々の重荷やブルーな物事からは遠く離れていって、彼らのもつ宝物や彼らが放つ一語一句の言葉をリピートするオウム達を想像させてくれる。それは「ハーフ・ザ・タイム」で歌われる「どれが僕のベイビーだい／どれが俺のマネーなんだい／安らげる夜はいったいどれなんだ／そんな時のおよそ半分を掛けて決心したのさ」といったフレーズに表れ、クリスチャン・デ・ローック（Christian De Roeck）とブライアン・マークハム（Brian Markham）とパット・プロデリック（pat Proderick）（または、キリスト・オブ・スモーク（Christ of Smoke）、ハム（Ham）そしてプリミティヴ・マン（Primitive Man =「原始人」の意））達がこの音楽で手にしているものは、思うに、僕らがピクニックバスケットに詰めて、金だけの為のそんな一日の予定を全て吹き飛ばすべきだ、なんて事であろう。もしくは、ダイヤモンドと子供なんて選択幅のことなんて忘れてしまって、好奇心の赴くまま、その特別な日にお天道様も赴くそんな日に経験出来ることをすればいいのさ！なんてことを彼らは言っているのかも知れない。この３人の男たちはデイドリーマーズ（「夢想家たち」）で、あるがままの彼ら自身を受け入れてて、そう身を置く事の重要さを彼らの前作アルバム「オン・ザ・ナイフ」（"On The Knife" 2009）ではしばし言及している。エッヂをそぎ落としソフトにし、より健全なソウルである -- じっくりと座り込めるカウチ（Couch「長いす」）での仕事っぷりで培われることみたく。僕らは座り込み、そんな喧噪の中での寂しさに、そっと目を閉じて、何を感じる事が出来るかという事に身を注げるである。
Why does it seem like the easiest thing to lose sight of is what's really important? There are all of those self-help books out there reminding us to not sweat the small things and then get yourself ready to see how much happier you will find yourself. It's a simple thing to do, to just forget that if we have our family, our health, a roof over our heads and food on the table for at least two squares a day, things really aren't ever all that bad. Some of the happiest people in the world have just that or less and some of the unhappiest people in the world have a thousand times more than that. It's all a matter of perspective and when we're forced to take stock in what we need to care about, we get set appropriately. Brooklyn band Little Gold is a three-piece that writes music that passes through us like the movies suggest a ghost would, having us believe that nothing might be happening, but then we feel a warm rush and a tickle as the phantom-like body takes that short cut through our torsos. It's music that affects us without much trying. It just does. A song like "Half The Time," is a hit song if there ever was one and it opens up to us the way many of the trio's songs do: as examples of sharp bursts of garage pop that remind us that dreaming or getting out of our minds sometimes is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It might even be our lone salvation. They spend a lot of their time in bed, or imaging themselves in a bed, all cozy and insulated, far away from the heavier burdens, the heavier blues, left to imagine their treasures and the parrots that repeat their every word. It's sung on "Half The Time, "Which was my baby/Which was my money/Which one do I feel like saving tonight/I've got a mind to decide almost half of the time," and we think that what Christian De Roeck, Brian Markham and pat Proderick (or Christ of Smoke, Ham and Primitive Man) are getting at is that we should just pack a picnic basket and blow off all of our plans for the day because it's only money we're working for. Or, they might be saying that there's no need to choose between our diamonds and our children, so forget about it, it's alright to let the mind wander, to just experience what the weather has in store that particular day. These three men are daydreamers, and admit so themselves, and they often refer to the importance of doing so on the band's last album, "On The Knife." It takes the edge off and makes for a softer, more tolerable soul - something that acts as a worked in couch that provides a great sit. We can just sit around with ourselves, those lonely in a crowd, and keep our eyes closed, see what we can feel.
Following my previous translation for the GIVERS of an old shit, I feel like I should do this new on time. And hope to see them in Boston soon. Oh but I'm not sure yet...
1). It's takes a trick and a half not to think about the springtime when listening to Louisiana's GIVERS' debut full-length album, "In Light." We tend to think about watering cans and the sprinkles that they bring. We think about the long, green hose running from the faucet at the side of the yard, packed with a powerful stream of water, ready to bathe some tilled earth or the blades of a begging lawn, ready for some drink and some reflection. We think about the seeds that were lovingly placed into the tiny little crevasses in the dirt, covered over and left down there in their incubating graves, waiting for their birthdays and a hole in their roofs. Without too much trying, we consider all of those soon-to-be-living things that we place underground, keeping our fingers and toes crossed that they'll find their way up to the sun that they aren't aware exists, but they can feel the warmth from it for half of every day. Those seeds then have to wonder about the change that takes places during the overnight hours, when it gets so chilly. They must be so curious, when they first begin to sprout and have more feeling in their extremities than they ever have before.
2). GIVERS makes us feel like those planted seeds must start feeling. They make us feel the faith that those seeds were placed into the ground with. There's nothing that can be done for any of those seeds, but to give them the very basic things that time has taught us they will need to poke themselves out of the soil and amount to anything that can be recognized as fruit, or grain or vegetable. It's the same thing with people. It's that blind faith that anyone knows what they're doing to get from Point A to Point B, with most of us learning rather quickly that points C-through-Z are all mixed up and often fall there in-between our shoving off pier and our true destination. There's a lot of growing, a lot of reading, a lot of failing, a lot of drowning and suffocating, a lot of seeking that has to come before anyone ever gets to a place where they feel that they're amounting to anything that could bear any figurative fruit.
3). GIVERS music is full of that life blood, of that heavy pulp that comes from the wringing out of the insides, of getting into those spaces where the muscles are tougher. It bellows CARPE DIEM, as if Tiffany Lamson, Taylor Guarisco, Kirby Campbell, Josh LeBlanc and Kick Stephan were are tattooed with the word over and over, forced to look at those nine letters, arranged as they are, and ruminate about the meaning of the phrase and what they're doing about it on a daily basis - the full embodiment of the phrase. You can hear it all over "In Light," that need to wake up, shake out the lethargy and just get to it. It's about stretching the limbs out as far as they can possibly go and living, goddamn it. Lamson and Guarisco sing, at one point on the record, "Don't get stuck in the meantime/There's no such thing as the meantime." It all means the same thing. It may as well just say, "Live, goddamn it," and it may as well double back on itself and trail off, out and to the distance, the gleaming of a smile and the purest of manmade exhaustions left behind.
As some of you following my Japanese twitter and my very close friends might know that I have declared I am not so into him, HONESTLY. There's certainly enough reason for that in myself. But I hate to say the reason why, so I'm not gonna say it though, I have a reason. And I also feel like, James Blake is, for me like, approximately a next year's break now. Maybe not yet. But now he's in the break, especially in the US? in EU? in Japan? (well, actually three big famous major venues he's gonna stop playing at as his headlining shows on his Japan tour is next weekend!) whatever, it feels like current dub scene really needs him secretly or apparently, or much more scenes needed so. I'd suddenly felt in this morning that I want to know myself why NOT so being into him (or much less like would say "his music") obviously in/from my heart now, and gotta an idea to find the thread from to translate in Japanese to more focus on himself an interview my friend music writer/blogger Liz Pelly interviewed him by phone, and the Sunday just after she did it on that Friday with Blake, I had a chance to hear how she interviewed him nicely as well as she got some amazingly sounds-nice answers from himself about his current surrounding.
Take a look at his website, you'd see movie motions automatically played on the top page of his official website (is, for me, much more nicer than his... wait, not gonna say that I promised, yes.) :
He played The Paradise Rock Club on October 3rd 2011.
(where a Japanese million hit maker singer song writer UTADA as an US artist has used to play at.)
Poised in a distinctive middle ground between leftfield electronica and soulful R&B, 23-year-old Londoner James Blake has been making a name for himself of late. Back in July, he impressed with his packed performance at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, and his homonymous Universal/Republic release was nominated for the prestigious 2011 Mercury Prize, keeping company with Adele's21and PJ Harvey'sLet England Shake(Polly Jean won). The post-dubstep producer and singer-songwriter spoke to me from the road in Portland, Oregon, in advance of his Monday night show at the Paradise Rock Club. We talked about his influences, playing to American crowds, and covering female singer-songwriters in the male-dominated sphere of dubstep.
(Her intro is gonna be) TBE!レフトフィールド・エレクトロニカとソウルフルなR&Bの間の独特なミドルグラウンドで独自性を放つ、２３才のロンドナー（Londoner）ジェームス・ブレイク（James Blake）は「レイト（late）」と自身の事を名称する。今年７月に、シカゴのピッチフォーク・ミュージック・フェスティヴァルにて満員の会場にてそのパフォーマンスで印象付け、ユニヴァーサル／リパブリック（Universal/Republic）同時リリースの作品は名だたる「2011 マーキュリー賞（2011 Mercury Prize）」にノミネートされ、アディール（Adele）の「２１」やPJハーヴェー（PJ Hervey）の「レット・イングランド・シェイク（Let England Shake）」と同賞を獲得していた。（ポリー・ジーン（Polly Jean）が優勝）そんなポスト・ダブステップのプロデューサーでありシンガーソングライターである彼が、月曜の夜にボストンはパラダイス（Paradise - venueというライブハウス会場）にて行われる彼のショウに先駆けて、オレゴン州（Oregon）はポートランド（Portland）から話をしてくれた。彼が受けた音楽的影響や、アメリカでのライブ／オーディエンスについて、そして女性シンガーソングライターの楽曲をダブステップという男性中心のシーンの領域の中でカバーすることについて話をしました。
YOUR MUSIC TAKES AN ALMOST AVANT-GARDE ATTITUDE TOWARD SPACE, SILENCE, AND MINIMALISM — THERE AREN'T A LOT OF HOOKS OR CHORUSES. BUT IT STILL HAS THE ACCESSIBLE APPEAL OF POP MUSIC. WHAT LED YOU TO THINKING THIS WAY ABOUT MUSIC?
▽James Blake " I suppose I didn't really think about hooks or sophistication. In my mind I was trying to design something that was original that I hadn't heard before, on every track. . . . I suppose that was the quest, and then it became trying to let my music breathe within those parameters, and make nice, melodic ideas sound interesting."
WHAT WAS SO TRANSFORMATIVE ABOUT DISCOVERING DUBSTEP?
▽JB "I didn't start producing until I listened to dubstep a few years ago. That was when I decided to pick up [software program] Logic and start making beats and stuff. I had been playing piano for a long time but I hadn't been producing until then. It was just really heavy, emotionally and sound-wise. There was really a lot of depth to it, and space. It was fun and exciting. And it is still, to me."
DO YOU PAY A LOT OF ATTENTION TO THE WAY PEOPLE WILL RESPOND PHYSICALLY TO YOUR MUSIC?
▽JB "Yeah totally. It's designing music to sound systems, trying to follow in the footsteps of people who made music to sound systems in the genre of dub. That whole sound-system culture is something that kind of carried over to dubstep. Producers try to make a sub sound as tight as it can, to give you that feeling."
DO YOU NOTICE THE CROWDS AT YOUR AMERICAN SHOWS ARE DIFFERENT FROM UK CROWDS?
▽"Yeah I think they are just really supportive. Not that people in the UK aren't, but I think there's a different attitude towards music over here. Especially if you're from the UK. I think there's a familiarity with a lot of the things I grew up listening to that a lot of people [in the US] did as well."
DUBSTEP IS A PRETTY MALE-DOMINATED GENRE, BUT YOU'RE PLAYING DUBSTEP-INFLUENCED MUSIC AND THEN COVERING ARTISTS LIKE JONI MITCHELL. AND ONE OF YOUR BEST-KNOWN TRACKS IS A FEIST COVER, "THE LIMIT TO YOUR LOVE." IT BRINGS TOGETHER THIS MALE-DOMINATED SPHERE WITH THIS VERY FEMININE, EMOTIONAL PIANO MUSIC. DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON THAT?
▽JB"I definitely do. At my shows, it's a 50/50 split every time between men and women, and I think that's amazing. It's also multi-culturally pretty split evenly as well. In terms of gender though, I think the purest form of who you are will always come out in your music if you're honest with it. And I'm not an outwardly overly masculine sort of personality. I've always been kind of laid back in that respect. The things that drew me to dubstep in the first place weren't necessarily the kind of testosterone-driven environments that you got from say, late jungle or some of the drum 'n' bass stuff that was happening after that. I think the dubstep that has come over to the US, and certain producers — who I can't even be bothered naming — have definitely hit upon a sort of frat-boy market where there's this macho-ism being reflected in the sounds and the way the music makes you feel. And to me, that is a million miles away from where dubstep started. It's a million miles away from the ethos of it. It's been influenced so much by electro and rave, into who can make the dirtiest, filthiest bass sound, almost like a pissing competition, and that's not really necessary. And I just think that largely that is not going to appeal to women. I find that whole side of things to be pretty frustrating, because that is a direct misrepresentation of the sound as far as I'm concerned."
ダブステップは殆ど男性によるジャンルという認識が強いですが、あなたはダブステップ影響下の音楽をやりながらもジョニ・ミッチェル（Joni Mitchell）などのアーティストをカバーしたりもしてますね。そんな中で有名なのがファイスト（Fiest）の"The Limit To Your Love"ですが。特にこのカバーは男性的な存在感でありながらとてもフェミニンな感覚も同時にあって、エモーショナルなピアノミュージックですよね。この点について思ことがありますか？
▽JB "Oh no, not at all. Those are just songs that I like, and definitely not decisions I made based on gender at all. But I have noticed this kind of pattern in female pianists, especially, the style of play is a very supportive role within the composition. And I love that. And I kind of envy that. Because there's this kind of male tendency to flourish and to embellish on things that might not need it. And that is definitely an ego-driven thing which I don't think someone like Joni Mitchell really was a purveyor of. And I kind of appreciate that about her music."
★Youth Lagoon / "Posters" live @Rhythm Room Phoenix Arizona09/05/2011
↓ヴァイナル安いっすね。。
thnx & great job Liz!
Kennyy
as MELTRICK
Edited on [(Wed) Oct/5th/2011]
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【本日の/Today's BGM selections】
★Rubblebucket / "Red Line Beat" (live)
At Camp Jam in the Pines Sep-18th-2010
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愛しのエミリー。大好きです。
この映像にも映っているメガネの、FMLYのメンバーでもあるサミーやBIRTHDAYSの面々は
ストレコさん（このページの右横のバーにもあるTHE STONE RECORDSさん）経由で知り合えた今ではかけがえのない僕のボストンでの友人なのですが、僕がエミリーと初めて会った時に、サミーが「He's your huge fan!」みたいな紹介をしてくれるものだからえらく緊張しましたけれど（笑）、いろいろお話し出来て、、ってのが九月の頭の出来事だったのですが、まだレポれてません！！わーお。
★Emily Reo / ""
live at FMLY FEST 12/27th/2011 Los Angels
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Congrats! Miss. Saucy's debut album has just released!
