Empty blogroll: 404s, Simon Reynolds, and Floridian post-punk

I had a trawl through some old bookmarks last weekend. Yeah, it's pretty rock and roll out here in the rural Vale. 

I was curious to see which of the old mp3 blogs were still up, never mind still posting. I mean I was talking about the decline of the mp3 blog format in 2013, but I was hoping that the sites were still available. 

Yet at the risk of getting all Retromania, I'm saddened by how sites like The Beat!, No Pain In Pop, Waves At Night, Altered Zones, and so many more are either 404s or worse, taken over and hosting VPN or trading spuff. Is this astroturfing? Digital squatting? There's definitely a term for it, Tedium will have something I'm sure. 

Thankfully some are still up with archives you can trawl through rather than go via the Wayback Machine. The Ill-ec-tron-ic (last post 2012), Rose Quartz (2013), 20jazzfunkgreats (January of this year, so maybe will come back?) remain. And would you look at that Simon Reynolds is still rocking with Blogger, posting regularly across multiple strands; blissblog, Energy Flash, and yes Retromania amongst others.

Let's wrap this up with something from blissblog then, something post-punk too as it's been a long while since we had a bit of that. Here's the Floridian post-punk outfit The Stick Figures with the knotty but funky N-Light.

Image credit: SPUI, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Heart On Sleeve: The List Track

In Chapter Four of Simon Reynolds’ Retromania, Good Citations, the switch of bands’ influences is noted. Where bands used to cite books, films and movements, since the 80s bands have cited other bands and this then filtered into borrowed riffs, stolen lyrics, even lifting band names from their sources and idols.

I believe this has evolved even further into the niche of the list track.

Doing away with the interviewer entirely, it’s an elongated shout-out to peers, influences and idols, an audio version of what used to be done in the linear notes. The first occurrence I can think of is LFO’s Intro on Frequencies, then Daft Punk’s Teachers.

The most famous list track is LCD Soundsystem’s epochal Losing My Edge.

Perhaps a pastiche on the list track, it lists pretty much every cool band ever, illustrating the protagonist's supposed coolness and underlining his desperateness. Incidentally I’m certain the way James Murphy rolls “The Sssssssssslits”, made me pick up a copy of Cut in a sale at Virgin Megastore Cardiff way back when.

The reason I’m posting about the concept of the list track is not only because of Retromania but one of them popping up on an Odd Future mixtape (Ace's Fin).

Well it has been pretty hard to avoid them.

I’m not going to get deep into the debate around the pros and cons of Odd Future’s lyrics (for me they’re just another sound in the mix as I’ve got a total inability to remember words), but I think it’s interesting that they use one. I’m sure there’s a history of shout-outs on mixtapes and thus my ignorance highlights my general antipathy towards most hip-hop, but for a band angling itself as completely off the wall, they are conforming with the use of such a trope of modern music.

Or should that be postmodern music? Or pseudomodern?

Is it reductive? A defence mechanism against criticism? Are they directly helping fans find other music now that artwork has disappeared?

I should’ve probably thought of an answer before writing this…

[Right click and "Download Document" for mp3 of Fin by Ace]

Simon Reynolds Meets Ariel Pink

Over on Field Day's site they've got an interview by my favourite music writer, Simon Reynolds,with one of my favourite musicians, Ariel Pink.

It takes Reynolds till the fourth paragraphs to whip out some of his trademark hyphen pun play, which is pretty good going. It's also a pretty good interview contextualising Pink's place in the pop pantheon as well as his past.

Reynolds has a new book out Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past, which I'll pick up when I eventually get paid. Pink is playing Field Day on August 6th with his Haunted Graffiti and is currently dominating my tracklist for the Field Day mix I'm working on. Expect it to drop err... before August 6th.

[Right click and "Download Document" to grab an mp3 of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's paean to Kate Bush, For Kate I Wait]

Repeat, Rewind, Start Again, Never End

I'm rereading Retromania by Simon Reynolds. Yeah, I know. I finally got around to finishing his latest work, Shock & Awe, over Christmas and decided to leap back in.

Naming my blog after an obsolete medium, it's no surprise that I can't help but look backwards, particularly to the time I was 17-18. Despite going through some personal shit that I'm not sure I'd cope with now, that period has a halcyon glaze. It appears it can for a lot people too, mythologies arise for many from late adolescence, cultural choices set in stone.

And I process and return to that time through tapes. I have a shoe box of tracks and mixes I tapped off the radio, almost all BBC Radio 1 specialist shows from 2002-3. There may be one or two things from Radio 3's Mixing It strand, but it's mainly The Breezeblock, The Blue Room, and Gilles Peterson.

Currently in the Sony is a Mr Scruff mix from spring 2002, with a Peshay mix on the other side. Adding to the circles and the loops, the standout track on the Mr Scruff mix is Natural Self's Raise the Game.

A joyous riot of horn blasts, good times and broken beats. It's also a joyous riot of pretty much the last 30 seconds of Black Brothers from Latin Jazz chap Tito Puente.

Loops upon loops upon loops. It's not even the first time I've written about these never ending cycles. Is escape possible? Do I even want it?

Related posts:

• Ever Decreasing Circles
• YouTube = Total Recall
• Stretching Metaphors

YouTube = Total Recall

Just finished chapter two of Simon Reynolds' Retromania, hey I'm a slow reader. Big chunk of it is focussed on the work of Daniel Lopatin. Best known for his work as Oneohtrix Point Never, who I've never really dug (unlike XXJFG), it hones in on his work as Sunsetcorp, especially his track Nobody Here.

As the cads state in the comments, it's the ultimate answer-phone message. Yet perusing the sidebar, another facet of Reynolds' chapter on Music and Memory in the Time of YouTube, is the far more interesting track Angel, both visually and musically, though it shares the same warped, spooky melancholia as Nobody Here.