Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Speaking of breakbeat...

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:13:12 -0700

or just plain "breaks," as I was last time: The Prodigy is generally considered to be the definitive breaks act, and they have been the most visible, thanks to several videos centered around frontman Keith Flint's evil-clown persona. But Prodigy mastermind Liam Howlett's music underneath Flint's antics is top-notch, with driving beats and klaxon-like synths that unilaterally impel dancefloor action.

The Prodigy - Firestarter

My favorite breaks tracks, though, are four songs by Cirrus from their 2002 album Counterfeit. They hit four home runs that surpass even The Prodigy for danceability, though their lyrics can be pretty awful, e.g. "Breakbeat suckers, we're the real motherf*ckers"--

03 Breakbeat Suckers

Cirrus

But those beats! And those drop-outs, and phase-shifts, and synth hooks, and everything! Aww, yeah... file under Guilty Pleasures. Nothing Cirrus has done before or since has matched the core of Counterfeit, and they might not ever match it again, but "Breakbeat Suckers," "Dragon Lounge," "Ghetto Blaster," and "Unbreakable" should hold up for generations (as well as any electronic dance music can be expected to).

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I'm still listening to Peter Hope (and Nine Inch Nails)

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:24:08 -0700

Since I've put up two songs from Peter Hope's post-Box career, I should really put up something from the band that put him on the map. (You know, my map.) The Box was formed by the original ClockDVA instrumental lineup after being fired by bandleader Adi Newton; Peter Hope won the spot as their singer, and Terry Todd was recruited on bass. They made quite the postpunk no-wave racket, summed up best by the first song on their first record, 1983's self-titled 5-song EP:

A1 No Time for Talk

The Box

And I am continuing to work my way through the Nine Inch Nails back catalog; today it's been The Fragile. Trent's never done much in the way of breakbeats, but The Fragile contains a killer breakbeat instrumental, the all-too-brief "Complication"-

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Dap-dippin'!

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:19:18 -0700

The State Theatre of Ithaca has just announced its 2008-09 season schedule, and the big news is, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are coming to Ithaca! Yahoo!!! Not until November, though; sigh. But I'm going!

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings "100 Days, 100 Nights"

04_The Dap Dip

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings

And I bought tickets today to see Nine Inch Nails in Philly! On Mrs. Veneer's birthday...oops.

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Shawn Lee and soundtrack music

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:23:33 -0700

Shawn Lee has just put out yet another new Ping Pong Orchestra album! It's called Miles of Styles and, as the title suggests, it's got the most varied genres of any record in the series (and it's also double the length). The tunes are mostly instrumental, and Lee uses the song titles to telegraph their content: "Punjabi Lullaby," "Brazilian Bubble," "Lagos Calling," "Heist in Helsinki," etc. Here is "Italy 73"--

09 Italy 73

Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestr

Is that an homage to 1970s Italian thriller soundtrack masters Goblin? I think it's a safe bet; here's some Goblin:

15-La_via_della_droga_-_31

Goblin

So far we've had two of the four kinds of soundtrack music:

Fake library music. Real library music is marketed to film producers to use in film soundtracks. Usually the records or discs are several times more expensive than "consumer" recordings, because the price includes royalties for unlimited use in films. This is where most of the music in instructional, promotional, and documentary films comes from. Feature films with too small a budget for original music also rely on library music. Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra albums are consumer products; anyone wishing to use the music as a soundtrack must negotiate licensing fees. Thus, "fake" library music.
Real soundtrack music. Commissioned for a specific, actual film, as Goblin's track was.

The third category is real library music, such as Eddie Warner's Cops, Crooks and Spies album for library label l'Illustration Musicale, with tracks like "Detective Theme," "Prohibited Sector," "Manipulated Code," and the Goblinesque "Infernal Crime"--

A6 Infernal Crime

Eddie Warner

Finally, there is fake soundtrack music, or music composed as the soundtrack to an imaginary film. J.G. "Foetus" Thirlwell has put out three such albums under the moniker Steroid Maximus. Thirlwell's psychotic rantings can become tiring to listen to, but his Foetus backing tracks were always interesting. It turns out he really is a gifted composer and arranger, and the mostly vocal-less Steroid Maximus albums showcase that facet of his talents. I haven't put up any car chase music for quite a while, so here is Thirlwell's excellent "Chaiste" (get it? chased?) from the 2002 album Ectopia--

11 Chaiste

Steroid Maximus

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Unlikely covers

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:30:53 -0700

A few days ago Jeff was looking for an unlikely cover of a disco song; that reminded me of something I came across last year, a disco cover of an unlikely song. Yardbirds disco, anyone? If that's not weird enough, the chorus turns into southern rock! (At around 2:20)--

Chilly - For Your Love (1978)

The recorded version is actually twelve minutes long, and it is strangely mesmerizing; I listened to all twelve minutes of it without being able to stop it. More than once, too. Solid Goldberger has the whole track here.

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Space: 1999

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:52:27 -0700

After watching the Space:1999 pilot episode with me, none of the family is interested in watching any more. They are rather slow; but what fabulous sets! I wouldn't mind living out my life in the dark of space if I could do it with such sleek plastic furnishings and fluorescent wall panels. Yesterday I found the perfect viewing opportunity: it's a fine accompaniment to folding laundry. The highlight of any episode comes near the beginning, as the opening credits show quick clips of the episode to come over a wah-wah-driven theme song. I looked that up on Seeqpod, then decided to look up another of my favorite sci-fi themes, from UFO, to discover that both themes were written by the same man, Barry Gray. Gray was the house composer for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of "Supermarionation" fame (Thundercats, Captain Scarlet, etc.); Space: 1999 and UFO were their shows as well. So here are those two theme songs, back to back:

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AOR addendum: New England

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:22 -0700

There was one more minor AOR hit I wanted to include in my last post, but there was no audio file to go into the Seeqpod player. "Don't Ever Want To Lose ~~You~~ Ya" by New England was one of many songs I taped off the radio in 1979, but never got the album. Their marketing angle was being "Produced by Paul Stanley of KISS," and they were a hairy bunch who looked like they might have been Kiss without the makeup. But if power pop was stealth new wave, as I contend, then New England was stealth power pop behind the hard-rock facade:

NEW ENGLAND - Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya

Wow, it sure was windy in that studio! Don't you love how earnestly the keyboardist Jimmy Waldo sings along on the chorus? And how about drummer Hirsh Gardner's hair?! He should've been in Journey with Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie, that would have been the ultimate hair band. But getting back to the music, it's not far from bona fide power pop anthems such as "Tomorrow Night" by The Shoes:

Tomorrow Night - Shoes

But the visuals from New England's video remind me of something else... Hmmm.....

The darkness-Love is only a feeling

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Touch

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:27:14 -0700

The pinnacle of my used-record-store-owning career came when a guy from the next county called and said there was a song he'd been looking for for ten years, but nobody knows what it is, and the chorus goes "don't you know what love is," and-- and I stopped him right there and said, "That's by Touch, and I have their album that it's on, and the Castle Donnington Monsters of Rock album that has the live version." He showed up, eventually, and bought both records for $5.99 each. $5.99?! I could have charged more than that! That's one reason I'm out of the record-selling business. Anyway, the guy was so grateful to have the song after so many years of fruitless searching. The reason I knew the song was it was one of my favorites from the WAVA AOR years. In 1980 I taped the Monsters of Rock album off the radio when it was the 11:00 album of the night (because April Wine was on it, and I was really into them), and it was the Touch song I ended up playing over and over. I haven't heard it myself since I sold those records in 1993, but I've just found a copy to listen to again:

01 Don't You Know What Love Is

Touch

Those power chords and keyboards and chorused vocals sure sound great; I've always been a sucker for lavish production and arrangements. However, they can mask the fact that there's not much of song there; Touch's songwriter Mark Mangold would go on to write "I Found Someone," which Cher made a hit via the "if you shout it loud enough nobody will notice the melody is crap" method, a.k.a. "the power ballad" method. What a cultural bane. Oh well, I still like "Don't You Know What Love Is," and it makes me want to hear some coeval AOR hits and near-misses:

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Still wallowing in the 80s: Chrome

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:59:17 -0700

The big news is that my old pal Jeff has started his own music blog, at last. I've known Jeff since high school; he was into cooler music than I was, and lent me records and made me tapes to get me up to speed. All these years later (26!) we rarely listen to the same music unless upon recommendation from the other; his recommendations are always good, and now that he's blogging everyone can get them.

Since I'm reliving my high points of 80s music, I had to break out the ultimate Chrome album, 3rd from the Sun (1982). Chrome had already made great records, cyberpunk before the term was even coined, but adding the rhythm section of brothers John and Hilary Stench added a zillion volts of power to their sound. 3rd from the Sun is seven tracks of pure, throbbing sci-fi nightmare, my favorite being "Armageddon"--

Chrome - Armageddon

Chrome

I was always really impressed with Damon Edge's cover art for this album; then one day I realized all of a sudden, it's just a picture of a lion-head door knocker with larger photos of human irises cut out and pasted on! It's amazing that such a simple collage could be so transformative.

(See my previous Chrome post for another track.)

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The 80s are coming back

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:50:27 -0700

They've been coming back for quite some time now (since 1990), of course, but now my 1980s are coming back. Since my recent post on Slab!, band member Stephen Dray has announced their imminent reformation (in the comments on this blog post), or resumption rather, since he maintains they never officially broke up. Woo-hoo! And now Portion Control have announced a new album, Slug, to be released May 31. Portion Control's early recordings, originally released on cassettes, were obviously inspired by Throbbing Gristle. But by their first proper album, I Staggered Mentally (1982), they had settled on a more beat-oriented sound, or as they billed it, "Hard, Rhythmic Electronics." Their 80s career peaked in 1985 with their most successful single, the industrial dancefloor staple "The Great Divide"--

Great Divide

Portion Control

There's some nice percussion in there; I'm finally learning to play a bit in a local drum circle. It hurts after a while, but it's great to actually make the sounds I've enjoyed listening to for so long.

Portion Control ceased operations after their 1986 album, Psycho-Bod Saves the World, but returned with a new album, Wellcome, in 2002, and Filthy White Guy in 2004. So their reactivation isn't exactly news, but Slug is, which is a good enough reason to dig out my old Portion Control records for another listen.

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