Music
The Songs We Can't Escape
5ingles
THE BOREDOMS
"LIVWE!!"
Japanese out/kraut/noise/etc. tribalists enlist heavenly choir, bust through space-time continuum into new dimensions of rapturous transcendental awesomeness. While the sound of awed concert-goers losing their shit cuts into kaleidoscopic synths, angelic voices, and drum workouts more than I'd like, it does serve to up the overall sense of jaw-dropping "holy living fuck" surrounding this performance. Also, I'm sort of cheating here; this 40-minute-plus track doesn't just appear on Super Roots 9—it is Super Roots 9.
LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION
"Everyone I Know Is Listening to Crunk"
Am I really typing out the words "downer show-tune country" together, as a subgenre? Yeeesh. Very affecting in that privileged-hipster way familiar to folks who buy CDs based on Pitchfork recommendations. Somebody hip Lil Jon to this tune so he can flip it into a dork-friendly club banger.
MATMOS
"Rainbow Flag"
Dig on this fancy-pants threadmill-fuel: These San Fran electronauts come armed with inhaled-whippet scree crossed with merry, color-wheelin' bleep-bloop-blips and undulating fake horns. The back story this go-round? Unlike the duo's previous recordings, the forthcoming Supreme Balloon was constructed sans any oddball conceptual spare parts.
NO KIDS
"The Beaches All Closed"
Programmed beats that thump but don't bruise; alluring sampled handclap patterns; lovelorn murmurings; a Stevie Wonder shout-out? Behold: 2008's first indie-rock R&B wannabe slow-jam, coming at us by way of Vancouver. Life's weird.
PRURIENT
"Memory Repeating"
"I woke up today, not to trains, but to the mowing of a lawn," Dominick Fernow begins, his voice all grainy brown reverb, as rupturing blasts and rippling throbs begin a series of frequent monologue interruptions. This NYC-based noise artist/label head's new release, And Still, Waiting may represent his finest fusing of raw fury and perforated melodicism yet; have Fernow and Xasthur's Malefic been keeping company?