Trippy Reprise

So I did some re-listening to the Massive Attack stuff. They certainly were paving the way for Tricky and Portishead. Even paving the way with Tricky. I didn't realize that Blue Lines was from 1991. Man, were they ahead of their time. I'm listening to their Mezzanine album at the moment. I never really got into it in '98 and it has been many years since I last listened to it. There is some great stuff going on there. I think it may remain in heavy rotation for a while.

I guess that my oversight was more due to the fact that they lacked a certain downbeat murkiness and sorrow that the other two mastered. Perhaps the grandness of their sound kept them just far enough out of the emotional gutter for me.

In any case, I'm quite excited for Portishead - Third. Out today!

SOTD - 1000 Homo DJs/Supernaut

Supernaut is actually a Black Sabbath song. My friend Kyle brought it back to my attention with a recent post on his blog where he referenced a disagreement that we had about this cover. In the early nineties, the chicago industrial music scene was like a music orgy. Everyone was in everyone else's band and there were a handful of studios in the city that seemed to be where they all wound up after long evenings of some sort of chemical indulgence. Ministry and friends wound up recording a cover of Black Sabbath's Supernaut and a handful of other tunes that they wanted to release as a Ministry ep. When Warner refused in fear of flooding the market with Ministry releases, they brought it to, then independent, Wax Trax Records. Since Warner owned the rights to the Ministry name they needed to use a fake name. The name 1000 Homo DJs came from a snide comment made by the Warner exec that nixed the project. Trent Reznor sang on the original version, but it wound up being shelved due to licensing issues for years until TVT records bought Wax Trax Records. Versions with both Al Jourgensen and Trent Reznor have appeared in various forms. Distinguishing them is the challenge. Check it out at Kyle's Music Blog.

Supernaut

SOTD - Chris Isaak/Dancin'

In the late nineties, Chris Isaak packed up his band and headed south down the California Baja peninsula. They found a remote place to lodge and let the atmosphere steer what was to come. Between surfing and cantina stops, they channeled their experience into a collection of songs that would become known as the Baja Sessions. Mostly, it is made up of session recordings of songs from earlier albums and a few covers with a few new songs mixed in. Due to the nice weather we have been having lately, we have had the summer tunes on heavy rotation. The Baja Sessions are often in that mix. My favorite songs comes toward the end of the disc, Dancin'. The song completely takes me on vacation. This song belongs, not on the beach swaying in the breeze or blowing through your hair as you drift down the PCH with the top down, like many of Chris' songs do. This one is more on the fringe. It is sonically the soundtrack to a small cantina that opens to the beach right about the time when you are hitting your third drink and the sun has just dipped below the horizon. Despite the present tense of the delivery of the lyrics, the "Dancin" in the song sounds less like a recount of what's happening and more like an anticipation of what's to come.

SOTD - Portishead/Threads

Last FM has been streaming the new Portishead album. Threads is the final cut on the album and the closest tie to what they were doing ten years ago. I like their new direction for what it seems to be, but I still long for the sexy lamentation that defined the beginning of their career. Unfortunately, I do not have a link for it at this time.

SOTD - NIN/Discipline

SOTD? It's the Song Of The Day, a new feature that I'll be trying out here at the Ear.

Today's song is Discipline by Nine Inch Nails. I don't have much to say about the song itself. In fact, it is pretty run of the mill NIN stuff.

The noteworthy part is how it has been delivered to the world. My understanding is that the song was very recently recorded and then rushed out into cyberspace and radiowaves. Here is the coolest part. It's free! Trent is giving away new music less than a month after the release of a double album. And it gets better. Not only is the song free, so are the multitrack files for people to remix. I've written extensively about NIN and the marketing and artistic experiments they have been trying lately, and I continue to be amazed and surprised by the bold directions that this band has been going. Keep me on my toes trent.

Listen to Discipline

Download Discipline

Record Store Day pt. 2

Unless you happen to live in or near a major city that is home to an independent record store that was featuring a live in store performance, Record Store Day can be summed up in one word. LAME!

The promises of free promotional label mixes and limited releases was a bust. Nothing free at Phoenix Records. A limited edition seven inch single by REM for sale? That would have been really cool 20 years ago. Don't get me wrong, any excuse to go record shopping is a good one, but the expectations of the day being something special were a big let down.

Well, it was a good idea. Perhaps next year there will be a bit more to offer.

Record Store Day

Mark your calendars! Saturday, April 19th is Record Store Day. Finally there is a holiday other than Christmas that is worth losing sleep over. Check out who is participating near you! RecordStoreDay

Feeling Trippy

With the new Portishead album just on the horizon, I have been inspired to dig back into my trip-hop albums of old. The genre had a very short lived heyday, but in many ways I am thankful for that. 1996 saw the release of two albums that would become the definitive sound of the genre. The first being Portishead's Dummy and the other being Tricky's Maxinquaye. The tunes are sexy and dark. They are smooth and jazzy in a haunted sort of way. They are also laden with slow and heavy beats borrowed from the era's hip-hop scene. Somewhere James Bond, Miles Davis, Snoop Dog, and David Lynch got mixed together into a smooth blend that can make anyone seem cooler simply by being in its presence.

I'm glad that the commercial trip-hop era was short. The genre burst through the gates with its two best efforts and had nowhere to go but down. Not that Portishead's and Tricky's follow up albums weren't good. Some of them were even great, but pale compared to the two aforementioned. There were also many followers that, again, made some great records, but couldn't hold a candle to Dummy or Maxinquaye. Hooverphonic, Massive Attack, Sneaker Pimps, Red Snapper, Morcheeba, Lamb, Ruby... all of them are worth listening to. The genre died off before it slid from good imitators into the bad ones. This happened with most of the techno and grunge scenes that were flooded with terrible knock off acts at that time.

Portishead's latest is to be titled Third, denoting that it is there third record. Simple or clever or both. I truly admire the fact that the waited 10 years to follow up their last effort. It has been long enough that it won't sound like just another trip-hop record in the late nineties. They also waited until they were ready to do something unique with their sound instead of just recreating the same thing. From what I have heard of the new record, it is very dark and Beth Gibbons sounds more haunting than haunted. James Bond appears to have left the building and let Caberet Voltaire fill his place in the mix. It seems hard to access and takes patience to really get into what they are doing. It doesn't seem like it will be a car trip album or make me seem any cooler than I am, but that isn't what this one is about.

There is a great in-studio performance of some of the new material on Current TV. Portishead in Portishead

A.A. Bondy

This guy came out of nowhere and knocked my socks off with a bluesy folk album. It's called American Hearts and is a quant and personal album that recalls early Dylan and RA's Heartbreaker. I first heard him on All Songs Considered on NPR a few weeks back. It has been a mainstay in my car ever since.
Check out this short performance from A.A. Bondy at the South By Southwest Festival.