Category: Music

I saw Kid Koala play last night with Bruce and others. I think this is the fourth time I’ve seen him, but he’s still a memorable performer and I had a great time at the show. He did a longer-format set than I’ve seen before, mostly hiphop mashups with his signature turntablist pieces mingled throughout. I actually quite liked the mashups – he’s incredibly fluid and clearly has a wide range of musical tastes, making for some great mixes. For the Toronto crowd, he threw in a hilarious old “Let’s go to Yonge Street” record, which he seamlessly mixed back-and-forth with some scifi tech-house… very slick.

If you’ve never seen him do his Moon River piece, check out the YouTube video below. I love this performance – it was the centrepiece of his “for the romantic couples set” in a velvety red room in the basement of the Vancouver planeterium I saw a few years back. At last night’s show, the video screens showed him carefully moving the needle around the record to play the right notes in the strings section – so cool. He uses three copies of the same Audrey Hepburn record to put this on, and it looked like the strings part might have been the B side of the same record.

[Update: the original YouTube has been taken down, but here’s a video at Daily Motion]

One of these days, I should check out his latest two albums, I suppose!

As you may know, I still occasionally put together little mix CDs. The purpose is usually just to squish a bunch of my favourite tunes into one album, to keep a sort of record of my tastes at a given moment, and to foist the music I like upon unsuspecting friends. After I listen to them dozens of times, the mixes tend to gather lots of sentimental associations. Whenever I hear the tracks on their original albums, they feel somehow wrong – I always anticipate the next track from the mix afterwards, and the real album feels surprising.

Anyways, a new mix. The themes this time? Well, a bit more cinematic than usual; the Amon Tobin and Joe Henry tracks belong in a movie, and Angelo Badalamenti scores all of David Lynch’s films. Plus, my appreciation of the Beastie Boys and Beck has grown since I started watching the fantastic Director’s Label DVDs from Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

My tastes do seem to be stuck in a rut that doesn’t extend far beyond 2002, but that may just be a result of spending too much time in library of older mp3s. Or it may just be a consequence of the precipitous decline in electronic music since around that date.

E-mail me if you want to listen to the mix. Assuming you’re someone I know, that is.

1. tracy chapman. fast car. folk, from tracy chapman, 1988.
2. sufjan stevens. the upper peninsula. folk, from greetings from michigan! the great lakes state, 2003.
3. buck 65. wicked and weird. hip hop, from talkin’ honky blues, 2003.
4. beastie boys. sure shot. hip hop, from ill communication, 1994.
5. amon tobin. four ton mantis [radio edit]. drum & bass / breaks, from supermodified, 2000.
6. blaze. lovelee dae [isolée mix]. electro / house, 1997, from miss kittin: radio caroline volume 1 (2002).
7. redagain p & smash j. propella man. electro, 1999, from miss kittin: radio caroline volume 1 (2002).
8. dj teebee. quiet moment [instrumental mix]. drum & bass, from the legacy, 2004.
9. angelo badalamenti. the bookhouse boys. soundtrack / jazz, from twin peaks, 1990.
10. joe henry. stop. pop / jazz, from scar, 2001.
11. mocean worker feat. mahalia jackson. summertime / sometimes i feel like a motherless child. acid jazz, from home movies from the brainforest, 1998.
12. the little rabbits. des hommes, des femmes, des enfants et le sexe. pop, from la grande musique, 2001.
13. mouse on mars. schnick schnack meltmade. ambient / experimental, from autoditacker, 1997.
14. plaid. porn coconut co. ambient / experimental, from double figure, 2000.
15. beck. tropicalia. rock, from mutations, 1998.
16. man or astro-man? tetsuwan atomu. rock / surf, from intravenous television continuum, 1995.
17. broken social scene. superconnected. rock, from broken social scene, 2005.
18. the most serene republic. epilogue. rock, from underwater cinematographer, 2006.

I just read a cool article on CBC about the Dubstep sound from South London. It’s apparently a new branch of dub/two-step music, borrowing a little from the darker flavours of drum & bass. As I write, I’m listening to Mary Anne Hobb’s Breezeblock show (January 2006) that threw dubstep onto the world stage. Here’s a link to (low-quality) MP3s of that show if you’re interested.

Despite the newfound hipness of CBC 3, it still feels lame to be taking my musical cues from the CBC website… but whatever.

And another list for the new year: the albums I’ve discovered and enjoyed this past year.

Like last year, I’m still digging through a large collection of albums alphabetically, although the pace has slowed considerably. This year I made it through S and T, and nothing more. Mostly, I enjoyed long-acclaimed albums that I’d never got around to hearing: Tortoise, the Smiths, Stereolab, and finally a few Sonic Youth albums that I found accessible. Sufjan Stevens was a surprising and intriguing find, though, and Tyson put me on to a fantastic Buck 65 disc.

Why the slowdown in new consumption? Well, the shift from a computer science job to transit took its toll: I’m no longer spending hours in front of a computer with the headphones on. Instead, most of my listening this year took place during my two hours of commuting to work. The iPod was helpful there – I mastered the fine art of listening to music while biking Vancouver’s back streets. (The one time I tried using my isolating earbud headphones was scary, though – I couldn’t even hear a truck pulling up next to me. Apple’s original headphones are thankfully very poor at isolating the sound.) The sound quality while biking was so poor that I couldn’t really experience new music, so I stopped trying.

The CBC Radio 3 podcast was another excellent find this year. While they don’t have much on electronic music, they cover some very interesting rock groups.

As for concerts, I saw a few good ones. We Are Wolves were entertaining enough to justify watching twice more, RJD2 was great, and Art Brut was entertaining. Electronic shows really aren’t doing much for me these days, though… I was quite disappointed by DJ Shadow.

So there we have it. On to the next year’s music.

Great Albums (8/10)

• boards of canada. the campfire headphase. ambient.
• broken social scene. broken social scene. rock, pop.
• buck 65. talkin’ honky blues.
• herbie hancock. v.s.o.p.: the quintet. jazz.
• sufjan stevens. michigan: the great lakes state. folk, pop.

Good Albums (7/10)

• rae & christian. anotherlatenight. downtempo, soul, hip hop.
• smiths, the. the queen is dead. rock.
• sonic youth. daydream nation. rock, postrock.
• sonic youth. goo. rock, postrock.
• sons and daughters. the repulsion box. rock.
• spiritualized. ladies and gentlemen we are floating in outer space. rock.
• squarepusher. ultravisitor. drum & bass, experimental.
• stefie shock. le décor. chanson, pop.
• stereolab. emperor tomato ketchup. pop, downtempo.
• stereolab. transient random-noise bursts with announcements. pop, downtempo, rock.
• stone roses. fools gold (the remixes). rock, downtempo.
• stone roses. the stone roses. rock.
• sufjan stevens. illinois. folk, pop.
• sufjan stevens. seven swans. folk, pop.
• sweet trip. velocity : design : comfort. glitch, ambient.
• swollen members. bad dreams. hip hop.
• tortoise. it’s all around you. rock, jazz.
• tortoise. millions now living will never die. rock, jazz.
• tortoise. tnt. rock, jazz.
• tubbs. good days, better nights. acid jazz.
• u.n.k.l.e. sounds big brother is watching. big beat, hip hop.
• we are wolves. non-stop je te plie en deux. rock, français.