Thursday, July 14, 2011

Conquering Animal Sound Kammerspiel. It begins twinkly. Soft plucks, gentle piano, squealie voice. I don't mind the squealie voice. It is not Japanese squealie voice which disrupts my constitution. It is non-Japanese. It is not Tujiko Noriko. I haven't actually made it through this album entirely. It is likable but it isn't necessarily memorable. They are a new band. They don't have any pretensions yet about how to play their instruments or who their favorite member of Can is as of yet and so a lot of this is primitivism. Tristan Tzara, I've conveniently just finished a biography, would approve. Have you read his dada contributions. Was it more compelling in person because it has not travelled the age in between effectively. He was 20. But 20 in 1916 is not 20 now. "Thought is made in the mouth". And thus Twitter. Second track, more atmosphere or rather samples of atmosphere, fractured acoustic guitar, tension. Loveliness. I believe they are Scottish. I know, it is not difficult to confirm that. The internet has made us all sloths. I possess in the palm of my hand of all the entirety of human knowledge. Michael Scot travelled to Toledo for the same. He would look down on me as fatuous and decadent. But imagine the delight if Michael Scot could travel forward and see the access to the human encomium that is the internet. And yet might he have been Almohad equivalent of an obscurantist today, preferring the demo translations of Ibn Rushd before Abelard came and ruined the party. I have been to Toledo, Ohio, many times. It does not compare. My life would not compare favorably at all with Michael Scot and he didn't even have a car. I have a car. I could leave tomorrow and drive to the coast, take a ship westward and end up in an alien continent with Leptospirosis and disease ridden Civets and pollution. It has been raining ferociously for most of the week, each evening we are visited by a tremendous act of nature and it thrills. And on television I watch small children running through flooded parking lots in front of pawn shops and because I have read the Pro-Med mailing list for far too long I worry about them getting Leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is the curse of the good samaritan. although, I watched this week as a woman was rescued with a rope and unfashionable know from two inches of water along Dry Creek Road. Fourth track, the third was especially lovely but I was lost in tangent. This is reminding me of something. It will come to me. Is it not true that comparison is the bane of a real music reviewer's existence but it is the most effective way of describing the sound of music. Is comparison awful? I would love to be compared to someone I thought was fabulous. What if I was compared to Morrissey? And if the job of the new Morrissey was already filled by someone else more deserving then I could possibly rate as the second Jobriath. That position has not been filled. The governor of Texas is going to run for president. I wonder in a debate when he is asked who his personal philosopher is will he answer Jesus Christ? Almost certainly. What if he answered Morrissey instead? Sure he has some goofy ideas about militant vegetarianism but that would resonate in a world where i discover online profiles who seem to believe that torturing animals is worse than starving children. The lack of humanism in our age of narcissism. Perhaps their response is a comment on the obesity crisis and they find the idea of chubby children losing a few pounds not unreasonable but taping a kitten to a refrigerator door is. They are both reprehensible. Next track, we missed an instrumental, it was an incidental instrumental, an intermission. Is this similar to Palms? It is twee. Palms have constructed a facade of toughness. Are these entries "thoughts created in the mouth"? Possibly. It could be that I am an accidental dadaist. My genius lies in my naivety. I am not 20 years old. Because of the rain coming out of the south, from Arizona, because the dew point in Phoenix is above 55 degrees and it is really hot in the mojave desert the electric sunsets have returned. Denver is a city of grime. All of the dust and sloughing and the magnesium chloride returning to its original state. The rain is a baptism, thank you Lloyd Dobler. That last track was a bit unmemorable, it may have been where I was lead astray by previous listenings. It is the longest track and yet it is not the last track and so by rule it is meandering and uninteresting and probably should have been left off of the album. But one track must be longest unless all of the tracks are of equal length and then the true egalitarian spirit would take hold and music would be universal and would lead to cosmic harmony. I spent most of yesterday at a country club. There was an emergency. Several dozen trees were damaged and it may have meant that fabulously wealthy patrons might be denied their round of golf. It was have been an unspeakable tragedy. But the country club survived this Saturday and I skulked in shadows underneath the cottonwoods that survived their armageddon and watched the scions of "powerful" families, pretenders, on the driving range in their jodhpurs and with their generic scionness turn on little white balls, rotate their hips, come to level plain at the top of a back swing and lap up their inherited privilege. I felt like Durruti planning my next military offensive on the children of the Bourgeoisie. Last track was ok. It is easy to not pay attention to the music. Is that a problem? Probably. Electronic bands are a strange lot, they seem to have an endless repertoire of sounds and constructions to chose from and yet so many electronic bands sound just the same. Is it because Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook.com and did not become a member of an Orbital tribute band? I watched The SOcial Network and my two favorite characters were the guys who went around talking about themselves all of the time, "I am 6'5" and 220 lbs and there are two of me". Awesome. it was high comedy. I wish people at Harvard were that gifted, we might not have been afflicted with our mediocrity in chief if the Harvard depicted in fantasyland actually existed. The world is shaped by the tiniest minority. This is a more minimal track, radio static, her unaffected voice, swirls of melancholy and miasma. Nice. I should have listened to these tracks before, but the rain. The rain has taken on the convenience of being a built-in excuse for my lethargy. Similar to when the northern sky was dressed up in comets, when my mother would ask me if I had applied to some corporation I would say "But Hale-Bopp!". She would understand. Comets for the blind. There is the name of the second Conquering Animal Sound record. i don't know what their band name is meant to signify. I don't know is an acceptable answer, I am always told this. I am flying to Chicago soon and I will carry the philosophy of Morrissey in my pocket. it is a self-reliant philosophy and while sure he is a labor supporter and was just as outraged as Johnny Marr when David Cameron was expressing his undying love for the Smiths he espouses and individualism in his music. The fear of being apart from the herd must be overcome because the herd is based on belief and not the truth. Thom Yorke would have your fate ted to the masses, the unthinking masses that require not strawberries from Kenya but free newspaper records. This song is Giant. Her voice multi-tracked, it appears more interesting and lovely when it is difficult to focus it, they should remember this on future releases. They will release seven albums and then have children and move to New Zealand and live next to the Thompson Twins. And the sheep. I am 6' and 190 lbs, there is only one of me. I did not go to Harvard. I went to the University of Michigan. I did not create Facebook.com. My new online profile, oh and I think starving children is worse than torturing animals but I wouldn't engage in either. Neither should you. Last track, Ira, repeating musical motifs, pinched vocals, the same as always. They could be marvelous, they will need some practice in order to learn exactly how they might become marvelous. Just now, they are not.