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ONE
MORE WAY TO LISTEN TO MUSIC:
THE 5-DISC CD SHUFFLER!
Put
in five discs and hit "shuffle" and "all
discs" and just sit back and let the surprises come.
For example, what the hell is this funk groove coming from
my speakers? I can't remember what all I put in here, and
I don't especially like the rather synthesized nature of
the groove. Sounds like 80s-sheen-funk, like Bill Laswell-funk,
like TV-theme midi-funk, all other unfunky kinds of funk.
I mean it's okay, some of
the keyboard swells over the top are pleasant, 'dreamy'
and all that, and if I'm gonna be a critic my reader should
know that I tend to be forgiving towards music that exhibits
'dreaminess.' My reader should also know that, while it
may be in this case, the music I find 'dreamy' is not exclusively
'pretty' or 'pleasant'. I also find it dreamy when the Flying
Luttenbachers play heavy complicated prog riffs one right
after the other for like 15 minutes straight at a shithole
without air conditioning like The Fireside Bowl, or when
a Profanatica song comes churning off of a cassette tape
that was clearly mastered in fifteen inches of dirt from
Hell itself, as extracted by the band from upstate New York
soil during middle-of-the-night and particularly satanic
rites. Cuz you know, nightmares are dreamy too, as is any
sort of involved alpha or quasi-alpha state.
And okay, now that I've written
all that, and a few other songs have spun on the ole 5-disc
shuffle, I've deduced that the kinda iffy midi-funk track
was a track by Aphex Twin, from the I Care Because You
Do album. Not a bad album. Pretty good, actually --
I like it better than The Richard D. James Album,
although I think both pale in comparison to SAW 1,
Analogue Bubblebath, Surfing On Sine Waves,
and the recent Windowlicker EP. But yeah, it makes
sense, because Aphex (as I like to call him) can be both
cheesy and dreamy, often at the same time, blah blah blah.
But as far as nightmarish, I've seen that "Come To
Daddy" video, and even just the recording fidelity
of Profanatica is scarier than that.
It's funny how you can just drift off while listening to
an mp3 jukebox, or the radio, or, in this case, the CD shuffler.
I thought one song was something from Nondor Nevai's The
A Capella Cantata (great album, by the way -- some would
call it a karaoke trifle but I call it nothing less than
totally gutsy and heavily involved honky soul music for
2001), checked to realize it was a 24-minute long jam by
Temple of Bon Matin, and then a few minutes later I was
like "Hey, I bet this is that Harry Pussy track that's
on that Chunklet magazine comp that I have in there."
I got up and realized that of course it wasn't, it was still
the same epic jam by Temple of Bon Matin. That's
the nature of the CD shuffler -- a perfect tool for creating
background music in your own home -- but it's also the nature
of Laser Temple of Bon Matin (as they are known on this
release, Bullet Into Mesmer's Brain, only).
They transcend their genre (noise? noise rock??) by putting
all of the possibilities/actualities of said genre into
a blender set on "low," as in low-key free-groove
soft-noise soul music. It's no coincidence  that
the album is mastered quieter than the other four in the
shuffler. This is music designed not to assault, but to
insinuate. Plus, ten minutes or so into the groove/fog/
stew, drummer Ed Wilcox can be heard singing actual rhythm
& blues scat vocals. And he's a white-boy, so this cain't
be rhythm & blues. Right? (Wink.)
Speaking
of Nondor Nevai, I hope that after this exquisite 24-minute
Laser Temple of Bon Matin track the Shuffler goes to his
karaoke version of Tom Smith's "Is This Good For Vulva?"
I wish the lyrics for this were still up on the web (maybe
they are--Tom, what is the status of the Shave site?),  but
as it is now it sounds exuberant, sexy, bad-assed, all that
shit. Using a seriously generic instrumental version of
"Disco Inferno" by The Trammps as backing music,
you've gotta hear the way Nevai shouts "Is This Good
For Vulva??? I wanna know..." in the place where you
usually hear "Burn baby burn..disco inferno..."
But no, the Shuffler
jumps from LToBM to Parson Sound, who were recorded some
30 years earlier, in 1968, but sound like a very good match
anyway, as they also turn the basic heavy rock groove-jam
concept into a shroudy piece of art, like a film of fog
or a painting of the sky. They're not nearly as mellow and
scatty as LToBM, though, going for a far louder and pummeling
form of tribalism. Like Black Sabbath, but without the pessimism
theatrics, and eons ahead of them in the sheer sonic department.
I
mentioned that Chunklet magazine compilation a little earlier
-- well, I kinda bombed my shuffler by putting in two
different comps from two different issues of Chunklet
-- 12 and 14, I believe. Damn, man, too much indie rock
at once. I find it slightly odd that such a great, hilarious
magazine as Chunklet, which is so good at tipping indie
rock cows, would reveal a rather blandish taste in indie
rock. The magazine is brilliant, but when it comes to music,
they're just a few more Rocket From The Crypt fans. Having
all these different earnest indie-rock bands together in
the Shuffler is really too much, like Neutrino with their
big Shellac drums, Chris Squire bass-sound, and big earnest
rock riffs, who I'm listening to right now (issue 12, track
9) and that was just followed by the earnest pop-chug of
Log, from Columbus (issue 12, track 3). Rust belt indie
rock just ain't really happenin' any more, ya know?
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1.
Mick Ronson
12.
Mick Slattery (guitarist, Hawkwind)
