Outer Limits Recordings - Foxy Baby (2010) [Tomentosa] // Grade: B+

Following the breakup of his short-lived—yet modestly acclaimed— UK dance-punk trio Test Icicles, member Sam Mehran retreated under a blanket of mismatched musical guises and cassette or vinyl-offered activity. The American-born multi-instrumentalist quietly and esoterically introduced a handful of (mostly) few-song releases for tiny imprints like English Spelling Bee and Not Not Fun under guises like Sam Meringue, Wingdings, Explorers, Flashback Repository and more-recently, Matrix Metals.

Outer Limits Recordings’ Foxy Baby (released back in July) is an 11-song collection of smeared hallucinogenic breezes that marks Mehran’s newest musical semblance for Not Not Fun and it may or may not have been recorded using some sort of boombox-to-VCR transfer method. 45-minutes of glam-y, “hypno-pop,” Foxy Baby plays with similar looped sublimity of (sometimes) label-mate Ducktails on tracks “Final Seduction” or the uppity “Bergheim,” but it’s two artists- the outsider glam-fizzle that came from Ariel Pink’s early work (try “Untitled” or “On The Rocks” here) and the (thankfully) now-collected sound of longtime UK artist Martin Newell and his Cleaners From Venus cassette pop, that Mehran seems to draw noticeable influence from.

Unlike some of the current lo-fi gazers placidly soundtracking sunsets for Sunday afternoons, OLR goes further, offering a varied and redolent genre-bent experience of pure headphone adventurism. Title track and (relative) fist-pumper “Foxy Baby” recalls Bowie’s prime 1970’s force; “Smoke Opera” bobs along with a driving Italo-referencing keyboard line; “Backstage Pass” takes a gloomy post punk dissonance which grows to thunderous riffage and, as you near the album’s close, it’s outrageous, Speed Racer-like car screeches that roar through “LA Skyline” and into “Driving at Night.”

Mehran’s label states that this concept effort, apparently recorded two summers ago in Berlin, attempts to follow the rhetoric of a metropolis-dwelling man that becomes obsessed with an exotic women, loses and finds her, smokes some cigarettes, then ascends into a “holy void of alien lights” to mark the night’s— and album’s— close. It’s with this narrative which sounds awfully like how some of us (hopefully) spent last Saturday night, that Mehran’s collection of codeine-soaked, sundry pop warps along wonderfully to a notable sonic success.

On the day to day, my taste tends to skew towards the “lowbrow”. Horror movies, comic books, 4chan, and the like. But I’ll admit it: I still fucks with museums sometimes. Especially when I stumble upon an exhibit that isn’t too high-fallutin’ for us common folk, some delicious black & white milkshake of culture.

Right now at the Museum of Arts and Design in Columbus Circle, there’s a really dope exhibit called Think Again: New Latin American Jewelry. Like how I use words like “dope” to spice up a post about museums? It first caught my eye when I was on their website and saw the above photo of the kid and the frosty ‘nana. I mean, doesn’t that look like a museum you wanna kick it at?

Not gonna lie, the rest of the collection was not as bling-oriented as I thought it was going to be. Luckily it was way more interesting than that probably would have been. I mean, there’s only so many socially-conscious takes on Jacob The Jeweler you can take in one sitting. The exhibit was instead filled with all kinds of different jewelry (term definitely used loosely here) that traced a pretty vivid portrait of the current state of Latin America, artistic and otherwise. That’s a brooch made of $100,000 Argentine bills from before their 2001 economic crash. The 2010 Argentine penny stuck on top is now worth more than all of those bills. Who knew jewelry could be so informative?

The exhibit is just small enough to be walked through before you get tired and try to sit on one of the odd looking chairs littered around the museum, which you would then be kicked off of because, yes, they are also part of an exhibit going on there by Phillippe Starck’s protege Patrick Jouin. Basically there’s a bunch of cool stuff going on at the Museum right now, so extricate your tuchus from its carefully honed couch groove and go absorb some culture and whatnot.

Oh Shit, Chill-Hop! Short of  a guest spot from say Chaz Bundwick, could this rap get any more chillwave? And the video? Shit is more chillaxed than Wahed Out and Neon Indian passing around a doob at a Tanlines concert.

On the real though, “Flying Overseas” is one pretty goddamn great song from Theophilus London and I love the old VHS look to the video, so fitting to the song. Another stellar release from Green Label Sound. How crazy is it that Scion and Mountain Dew keep putting out solid singles left and right? I wonder what would happen if Apple got into the mix?

Darkstar - North (2010) [Hyperdub] // Grade: A

2010’s been a year for the Hyperdub, with slamming released from Ikonika, LA hero Samiyam, and the immensely versatile Kode9, Darkstar are the latest to be released on the legendary label with their debut album North. Formerly a two-piece, the London based dubsteppers opted to bring in a third member to sing on their album, taking them in a different musical direction. Losing the bass driven dubstep, Darkstar take us North, on a journey through melodic synth-pop. Penultimate track “Dear Heartbeat” is a beautiful track of catchy piano licks, and in my mind, an underrated album highlight.

When I first heard Darkstar eighteen months ago, my impression was that there were a score of artists in the dubstep genre who were producing a similar sound to them, the thought of them changing direction so vehemently didn’t seem possible. This record however, sees an incredible digression from their initial sound, pursuing a lighter and more melodic direction, not dissimilar from Kieran Hebden during Four Tet’s Everything’s Ecstatic phase. Big single “Aidy’s Girl Is a Computer” remains the standout on the record, with glitchy vocal stabs over upbeat looping, the track will lodge in your memory bank, and haunt you when you least expect. By contrast, the soothing vocals of “Gold” show an authentic beauty and delicacy that was previously absent from the Darkstar sound.

Whether we call it a musical digression, or simply an act finding their own unique sound, Darkstar have produced a solid debut, that grows on you with each play. I highly recommend it.

The Dexter season is officially rocking. I have to tip my cap to the late inning rally by the writers, salvaging countless episodes of build-up and turning it into a momentum-fueled final act of the season. Maybe last season did coalesce this slowly, but I never noticed it because of how taken I was with Trinity. Interjecting Jordan Chase into the season would have captivated me more quickly, but fuck, now that they’ve got me, I ain’t complaining. We’ve finally gotten the rocket-ship ass-clenching roller coaster we were clamoring for. We shouldn’t complain. We should take it! Take it!

I kick it crazy here over in the re-up section of Mishka. I imagine that writing the weekly column is much like teaching a classroom . I can’t do the same shit every week. I’ll go fucking banana cakes. So I switch it up. This week we’re rocking the column in the form of the absolutely fucking pertinent questions about the remainder of the season that I’m going to pose. Your job is to ingest my nonsense, and then hit me with your thoughts. Let’s party.

—-

#1: Is Dexter the Coolest Feminist Ever?
I’m going to level with everyone. I’m really enjoying watching Dexter lay out dudes who put their hands on women. Watching him lay down the stink-fist on the abusive quasi-father of Astor’s friend last night had me fist pumping. Keep the fist pumping coming, yo! Tie that shit in with his pursuit of the Boyd Fowler Rape gang, and you have the coolest feminist ever. Sort of. I know I’m being ridiculous. But still, if there is anything that pisses me off more than a meathead demeaning of a chick, I can’t locate it at this moment.

Also, did you ever notice that Dexter’s continuously trying to fill the void left by his mother’s death? Ever since he was caked to the knees in her hemoglobin, he’s been searching for a proxy. He only gets close to women. Lila, Rita, now Lumen. And invariably, I’m noticing that they all die. He can’t seem to keep that maternal/sexual female figure on lock down. Much to do is made about Deb’s black widow status. But Dexter seems to get every chick near him killed as well.

—-

#2: Don’t You Want to Body Slam Petulant Teenagers?
Astor’s turn into a moody, bitchy teenage snot bag was groan-inducing and bothersome. Actually, she’s still a tweener or whatever, but still. I understand that losing your mother would fuck you up done good, but there’s something about whiny kids in television shows that makes me want to dragon uppercut their brains out of their skulls. Blah, blah, you don’t understand me. Blah, blah, oh my god how could you be porking Save the Last Dance so soon after Mom died?

She did serve the purpose of being Dexter’s means of reaffirming his humanity, but I’ll be damned if I could stand Astor in the majority of the episode. The little sap in me enjoyed their final conversation in the car, but for the most part I fantasized about someone throwing pies off her face.

—-

#3: How Does Dexter Escape Robocop?
Liddy is coming on strong, and something is going to go down between Quinn, Dexter, and Robocop. I love how his initial hiring at the hands of Quinn has been parlayed into his means of getting back at LaGuerta, and potential redemption. I’m never going to bet on Dexter getting caught, so every season it becomes “How the fuck does Dexter escape this?”

Any thoughts? Does Quinn go down in a blaze? Do Dexter and Lumen take him out? He hasn’t violated the code so what do they do with him?

—-

(more…)

Мишка Records 002: //TENSE// “Turn It Off” Now Available!

We’re proud to announce our second record release, this time a 7-inch from Houston’s //TENSE//.

Frustrated with the direction electronic music was headed, one man, Robert Lane, decided to create the sound he so badly craved. So, in the Winter of 2006, he bought some machines, learned to program them, and stole his girlfriend’s computer to record the ensuing beats. Since then, Mariana Saldaña (also of Medio Mutante) has joined him in what can only be described as a burgeoning Industrial/EBM juggernaut. //TENSE// was born with dreams of resurrecting the forgotten Wax Trax! sound. Keep your memories alive, but move into the future…

Last year the band self-released their debut album, Memory, as a CD-R. Earlier this year Desire Records pressed a limited-run vinyl of Memory and released an EP from the group simply called Introducing. Since then, //TENSE// has also released the Consume EP on Disaro Records.

To round out their year, we will be releasing the group’s first-ever 7-inch for “Turn It Off.” One of //TENSE//’s signature and standout tracks, this EBM anthem is available for the first time, anywhere,on this 7-inch. If you’ve never seen its video before, take a gander at the clip above.

The B-side to this release is the band’s dark and seductive re-imagining of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” the video for which is brand-spanking new (above). Tommyboy, who crafted both “Tun It Off” and “Sin Realitie” videos for //TENSE//, has returned with his latest icy and dark creation for the band.

We’ve pressed only 200 copies of “Turn It Off”on black vinyl and 100 more on red vinyl (which is available only via our special T-shirt combo pack). Like the black vinyl, you can buy the tee separately… but if you want that super limited, “going to be a collector’s item” red vinyl, you gotta get the combo pack.

“Turn It Off” will also be released digitally as an EP. The release will feature both A and B sides, along with remixes of “Turn It Off” by //TENSE// and fellow EBM revivalists White Car and Valis. And to really trip shit up, we reached out to two of Witch House’s best, Party Trash and Mater Suspiria Vision, to twist and contort “The Chain” into a frightening story of dwarves, forests and heartbreak.

And as with all MSV releases, its remix comes fully equipped with its own video collage (the video above) created by Cosmotropia de Xam in his signature style. We’ll have details on the 7 song digital EP and where to buy it for you guys very soon. In the meantime, why don’t you download Valis’ remix of “Turn It Off.”

//TENSE// – Turn It Off (Valis Remix)

Every once in a while—a nested while, as it’s more like, ‘While surfing the internet, every once in a while… (but still)—you come across something really special. Something really hilarious and poignant; something that cuts to the motherfucking BONE of the issue with effortless grace. Something that at once worships and crucifies it’s idols; brutally tender or tenderly brutal. Whatever it is.

Whenever you find one of these things, it’s always a good sign when the genius of it all bears an inversely proportional relationship with it’s complexity: the simpler the better.

And so here you go, all you post-sartorial haberdamondashists. Fuck Yeah Menswear. I subscribed so fast and so furiously that Vin Diesel gave me a football-phone (Or something).

And-and, before: I would also like to point out (while I’m featuring a site that juxtaposes fashion photography against literary riffing whose main appeal is juxtaposing pop-hop reference against hipster high-mindery) that this site (this one…not that one…The Bloglin) is owned by a couple of dudes who are at once depraved b-movie gorehounds and also say words like ‘erudite’ in conversation without skipping a beat. They also have no problem with my tendency toward hundred-word sentences. Behold the post-web. It’s here…better ask somebody.

A few of my favorites below. Enjoy.

—–

The ballad of solo steez.
A G’d up Lucifer.
Banished from Heaven for stunting on Yahweh.
Exiled from the blogosphere.
Brought before the inquisition.
My charge?
It’s blasphemous how on point my shit is.
Deuces to the LES.
Trading open bars for open skies.
One last round of LOLZ and Mexican Cokes with the squad?
Nah.
No goodbyes this times.
Peaced out quicker than Draper with a jumpoff.

—–

I took the fucking Ivy.
Standing on my hardwood floor.
Pennys with no socks (natch).
POV shot.
This shit is straight porno.
I’m a fucking cinemotagrapher.
Who the fuck are you?
I’m Trad in a toaster.
Fucking crispy.

—–

I had a dream.
I was Italian.
I was the stallion of steez.
I was the consigliere of crispyness.
I matched my Ferrari’s to my Stubbs.
I matched my speedboats to my ascots.
My women were bespoke, just like my suits.
Double breasted.

Always.

Yes. Always indeed.

Now that’s what I’m talking about! Guess the people at AMC must read my Re-Up’s because Vatos was all I could’ve asked for in an hour of television. I feel like my last two reviews have been slightly negative, so I’m a get all praise heavy with this one. But not without one little complaint: that first scene was pretty wack. I get it was to show us the depth of Amy and Andrea’s sisterhood or whatever but I just thought it was a little stupid. But pretty much from when it panned up from them to the creepy image of Jim digging his as-yet-unclaimed graves, this shit was on a roll.

Yes, thanks to Robert Kirkman, who finally wrote an episode, I got my zombie fueled bloodbath at the RV camp. It was as awesome and bloody as I would have hoped. But not before about 40 minutes of bloodless drama. This time however, it didn’t bother me one bit. Because it was zombie apocalypse drama: something only this show can do. I thought the theme of this episode was “how things used to be” and I thought the varied explorations of it were all pretty great.

I guess some people might think it was schmaltzy, but I liked the reveal that the hoodish dudes who kidnapped our boy Glenn were actually just a bunch of former retirement community employees protecting their wrinkled charges. This sort of pre/post downfall paradigm shift phenomenon was hinted at earlier when we learned Glenn’s mad skillz at navigation and avoidance of the geeks came from his time- wait for it- delivering pizzas.

Back in RV-ville Sheriff Shane’s gotta go lay the smack down on Jim, who’s been out digging graves because…well, why the fuck not, is his explanation. I especially liked the dilemmas the show was facing here: why, in a post-apocalyptic world, should you have to submit to any sort of societal restraint. Jim should be able to dig as many damn holes as he wants, everyone on earth is dead. The fact that the people in the camp sit around pretending everything is normal – discussing fishing, winding watches, laughing around a campfire, quoting Faulkner, worrying about toilet paper – is rendered ridiculous when reanimated human corpses show up and start feasting on their flesh.

I guess because Kirkman wrote it, this episode hewed most closely to the comics, both in tone and actual events. I knew when Amy sauntered off to tinkle, chaos was about to pop off. And, satisfyingly it did. Though, with the show holding off killing someone for so long, I sorta wish it had been a character I cared about a bit more. Oh well.

On the whole the fight was awesome. I liked just the sheer amount of walkers they had to kill; it was like a videogame. It makes sense though, they can’t just run, so they would have to take care of the whole pack of geeks that made it to them. Details folks, they’re important. Anyway, good episode overall. Now very excited for next week’s penultimate (WTF?) episode of the season.

This November’s midterm elections felt like a referendum on the perceived success of Barack Obama as a president. Though not so much on the policy failures of the Chicago Democrat as on the issue of his race. This year saw the development and apparent success of the radically conservative Tea Party, and their push for a return to a more “American” (read: white dominated) nation. Looking at this, we can safely say that there’s a belief percolating throughout the heartland that the United States of America (which had a 175+ year infatuation with the debasement and enslavement of African-Americans) was not ready for a black president.

The book is closing on this latest era of hope and good feeling. Morose Democrats in Congress and elsewhere face more scandal and public scrutiny than ever. The Republican presidential candidates for 2012 are shaping up to be little more than lieutenants in the Tea Party’s war to re-gentrify Washington. So what does all this have to do with music?

Music has always served as a wonderful distillation of mainstream cultural ideals. So we must acknowledge that the overwhelming success of black musicians in the 21st century has in part paved the way to the election of a black president. I’m not placing the entire responsibility for Obama’s success on the backs of rappers like Diddy, Jay Z, and Dr. Dre, and their status as cultural icons. But for a highly mobilized youth culture that can take significant credit for our president’s election, it is not a far stretch to consider that their first inkling of what wildly successful black people looked like came from music.

Everyone knows white people love to co-opt black music. Everyone from Pat Boone to Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Michael McDonald and even modern artists like Limp Bizkit and Eminem have all become superstars due in part to their abiding love of jazz, rock & roll, and hip hop: three musical styles absolutely constructed by African-Americans. However, in the new context of this radical Tea Party movement, white artists using black sounds takes on a new, perhaps unintended tenor.

Let’s look at an example: 22-year old white Alabama rapper Yelawolf comes from the same state where sixty years ago Emmett Till was lynched for looking at a white woman. Yelawolf probably doesn’t want to think this, but his seemingly imminent success as a white rapper is the product of a cultural era where white people no longer have to feel guilty about being white and proud. Eminem was 2010′s highest grossing rap performer in the same year where conservative whites reasserted their supposed birthright to being leaders in mainstream cultural currency. These things are not coincidences.

Heading into the 2012 elections, I am of the opinion that a whitewash at the top of the music charts is imminent. Sure, the music will be appreciated across races, but be sure to watch for the paradigm of people supporting whites solely because of skin color and using false assignations of talent to avoid being outed as racists. Being a white musician embracing black music has always been an easy road to success. Imagine being a white rapper in 2011. Easier and more lucrative than ever.

Politics in race and race in music are both topics that when debated tend to cause hurt feelings and crippling anger because of their line in the sand nature. Unfortunately their blending, especially in the face of one of the most vicious race-based backlashes in American history,  will spoil some great music and leave a bitter taste in the mouth of fame.

The Soft Moon - S/T (2010) [Captured Tracks] // Grade: A

Recording as The Soft Moon, one-man band Luis Vasquez seems a lonely wanderer trailed by his inner demons. The compositions that fill his self-titled, debut full-length are wrought with tenseness underscored by romance. Goth underpinnings meet psychedelic expanses, playing out in tortured splendor.

Vasquez was raised in the Mojave desert and the environment of his upbringing holds heavy presence. Fierce guitar drive, a single drum clap, and sparse vocals drenched in reverb mark ‘We Are We”. It sounds like Suicide, with less synthesizer. Vasquez has the same acute sense of rhythm possessed by jazz musicians and through this he is able to translate basic notes into long-playing, seemingly improvised landscapes. These are the icy, hard-edged sounds of 1980′s goth and industrial gone organic, composed onto a 38-minute album that listens like it’s two hours long.

The landscape that Vasquez creates is dark and uneasy. It is a journey of being lost, and going mad in the company of only yourself. Some steps are filled with sadness. “Dead Love” begs for guidance with weeping guitar and rising shouts of pain. Others craft the feeling of fear. “Primal Eyes” is beautifully nightmarish as an unknown helicopter descends, met by a waiting army of thrashing beasts. “Tiny Spiders” trades in dread for bravery. Rising synths sounds hopeful amidst their tense surroundings, coupled with distant vocal directives. The heaviness of the album’s tone overpowers your ability to imagine a narrative and you succumb to Vasquez’s hand.

The Soft Moon is an apt recording name for Luis Vasquez, his awaited full-length debut a lonesome space of gray tones casting an eerie glow.