Dead Can Dance

Here's another repost. Updated for 2011, this post was originally from April 2010.

Another "band" from the good old days: Dead Can Dance, now barely remembered, tossed into the dustheap of unhip history. But they were an important moment in the soundtrack of my life in the late eighties and nineties. How to describe Dead Can Dance without using tired descriptors? They were/are a British/Australian duo who released seven albums between 1984 and 1996. Their early (1980s) work was primarily dedicated to excavating ancient and medieval European music from the grave of academic pretension and translate it for the arty underground/goth music scene of the 1980s. But Dead Can Dance were definitely not a goth a band. Their ambitions were much more limitless; their music encompassed everything from Gregorian chants ("De Profundis") to faithful renditions of 13th century music ("Saltarello") or 16th century Gatalan tunes ("The Song of the Sibyl"). They had a song called "Echolalia" and used glossolalia in their music. Some have called their music Neo-Medieval, whatever that means.

Later in their career (1990s), they moved more into what folks today call "World Music" and away from their medievalist roots. But the music still holds up remarkably well. They were an important aesthetic influence on my musical education, although they were in many ways antithetical to almost every other kind of music I listened to at the time. Through Dead Can Dance, I learned to be cautiously open to intellectual pretension. I understand that there's a thin line between intellectual aspiration and pathetic (and bathetic) parody, but for some reason, I never placed Dead Can Dance in the latter category although many other bands or artists were not spared my scorn. Dead Can Dance felt incredibly earnest even as they collapsed time (centuries) and space (continents) into tidy album-sized chunks with lyrics that would not be out of place in Chaucer.

Brendan Perry, one half of Dead Can Dance, was someone who played in punk bands as a kid but having been influenced by the post-punk of P.I.L. and Joy Division took a complete left turn into more expansive music. Lisa Gerrard, the other half, is someone who you imagine should have done her Ph.D. in Medieval Studies in a small liberal arts college in New England. She looks tiny, frail, wispy, and proper. She later scored the music for the film Gladiator.

I like all of Dead Can Dance's albums but my two favorites are Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (1987) and The Serpent's Egg (1988), partly because these were the first two I heard. I still have both of them on vinyl and they sound beautiful, if a little strange. If I had to generalize, the former is based around melody and the latter around percussion, but both sound like nothing out of the twentieth century. For their latter, "world music" phase, I would recommend Into the Labyrinth (1993), probably their most successful album in terms of sales. Going more into territory that the Real World Records label was promoting, this album is impeccably produced but sounds a bit like two people who happened to accidentally put their (very) different songs on the same album. It was clear by this point that Perry and Gerrard were heading in different stylistic directions (and apparently didn't get along much either). Since then, Gerrard has had a fairly successful solo career contributing to movie soundtracks, having a beautiful voice worthy of sirens welcoming you into heaven.

Recently, Perry and Gerrard have decided to re-activate Dead Can Dance. Their new album Anastasis is due in August 2012 and the band is about to embark on a massive world tour (New York on August 29 and 30!). As preparation, they have released 21 live recordings from previous tours free on their website under the generic title Live Happenings. Many of these live songs remain "officially" unreleased on any album.

Here then, are three random selections from the Dead Can Dance oeuvre.

Here is "Saltarello" from the album Aion (1990), which refers to a dance first recorded in Napoli in the 14th century:



Here is "Echolalia" from the album The Serpent's Egg (1988). "Echolalia" literally means "the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person."



Here is the band in the latter day / world music phase with a song called "Rakim," actually only released in a live version on the album Toward The Within.

Lotus Plaza

[Quick update on the back-and-forth between this blog and the band Asteroid #4: World Peace has been restored. We had a summit meeting at Camp David, representatives were sent, negotiations were had, hands were shaken, and water has now passed under the bridge. Also, the band has generously and free-of-charge shared their most recent albums with Joy of Speed, which is cool, so there will be a review sometime in the near future!]

Now back to regularly scheduled programming: I've mentioned Lotus Plaza on this blog before on one of my various long rambling posts on the whole Deerhunter family, but I couldn't resist one more mention. I fucking love Lotus Plaza's new album entitled Spooky Action At A Distance. Just to reiterate, Lotus Plaza is the side project of Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt, who from what I can tell is the "quiet and shy one." Where Deerhunter operates like a fullscale rock band with a gamut of influences and tools, Lotus Plaza communicates a more private sensibility. The music is not necessarily innovative, but it's beautifully executed. It's mostly a variation of shoegaze pop, maybe harking back to bands such as Ultra Vivid Scene from the late 1980s, with bits and pieces of Stereolab thrown in, especially in the way in which the band finds bliss in repetition. Lockett has a crazy talent for mesmerizing minimalism: repeated riffs pummel your brain and unmoor you from the ground and put your head in a haze. The obvious touchstone here is My Bloody Valentine (Isn't Anything more than Loveless), but Lotus Plaza is much more poppy. And I gotta admit that this is album is very romantic, wraps you in a kind of swooning romance that is perfect if you're happy and in love, with just a hint that what you got is not gonna last too long, but you might as well enjoy it. This is one of my favorite records of this year so far. Definitely in the top five.

As a footnote, Spooky Action at a Distance is not Lotus Plaza's first album. Back in 2009, Lockett released The Floodlight Collective. I wouldn't recommend that first tentative debut, mostly because the production is so muddled that you can barely make out anything. I've read that he wanted the album to be vague, but it's a little too disjointed, and sounds like music made underwater with a cassette player.

Anyway, standout tracks on Spooky Action include:

"Strangers"



and

"Jet out of the Tundra"



Other reviews of the album here and here.

Disappointed!

Readers will note that I took down two mp3 files from band Asteroid #4 at the request of the band. (I posted them originally here). I have to admit that I'm disappointed that the band asked me to do this. Let me explain: (a) My blog post was intended to promote the band, not to exploit it. I did not post a whole album or anything, or link to some torrent site or some shit like that. I also pointed to links where readers could PURCHASE their albums for (real!) money. This is how people discover new music these days. They stream music or download an mp3 or two from a band, check it out and decide to investigate further. (b) I was under the (obviously misplaced) impression that The Asteroid #4 are a bunch of cool dudes, not part of some massive faceless corporate force ready to come down on people who like their music (or want to expose others to it). But apparently they are not. Either way, I still like their music but I'm severely disappointed in them. (Admittedly I am not that important to their big rock star world, but I had to get that off my chest).

EDIT: See Lotus Plaza post above for update.

The Asteroid #4

[This is a Repost from 2006 + some new additions].

My old favorite band from Philly, Asteroid #4, used to be this weird whimsical band in the vein of late '60s psychedelia. They put on fantastic shows and put out a great album (Introducing....The Asteroid #4) in 1998. I discovered them when a friend and I showed up at the record release party for Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, which was held at the Trocadero, the best place to see live music in Philly. The band (Asteroid #4) were four typical college-looking guys who launched into spasmotic space rock, even introducing a flute player at one point. They had totally ridiculous lyrics and deadpan faces. It was loud, melodic, with lots of feedback. It was actually pretty funny.

I saw them a few more times but lost track once they veered into a cul-de-sac of imitation; they started getting obsessed with mid-period Byrds, especially the canon of Gram Parsons. It's not that I don't like Parsons' music, but more that it was a tired move for them, and they didn't do it very well. However, at some point, they made their way back to Spacemen 3-influenced music, and from what I can tell they have two albums about to come out this year (2012), which by my count would be albums number 8 and 9.

One thing that was lost in the shuffle through their albums was their one-off non-album single from 1995, "The CIA Took My Dog Away" b/w "Mellow Beach," two spectacular tracks that perfectly encapsulate a kind of false nostalgia for never-really-existed late '60s English psychedelia. Lots of killer melodies, fake British accents, Traffic-like folk, and Syd Barrett-era weirdness, and throw in some My Bloody Valentine-guitar, and you have these songs. They never did anything quite as good after these couple of songs, which unfortunately remain unreleased on CD, although they are featured on an mp3-only collection of singles, b-sides and rare tracks that is available from their website here. For just $8, you get a 21 songs (!) covering all this early period Asteroid #4. It's a total bargain. Although I should say that the real treat is, however, their debut album, Introducing..., which is a bona fide space rock classic. They make no pretensions to be original, but they take their alien mythology very seriously. Get the debut here.

I'm posting two mp3s here which, I hope, the band won't mind.


The Asteroid #4 - The CIA Took My Dog Away [mp3]
The Asteroid #4 - Mellow Beach [mp3]

Update: tracks removed upon request of the band (or someone representing the band)

Long Live Philadelphia.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

This trance-like song, sung by Nirvana, is an old old song. Originally known as "In the Pines," it's a traditional American folk song dating from the 1870s, probably from Southern Appalachia. Like many old standards, nobody knows who wrote it, but Lead Belly (or Leadbelly), the black folk/blues singer who almost inexplicably gained fame in the 1940s, basically made it his own with some new lyrics (he called the song "Black Girl") and a new arrangement. The song always had a dark tinge, given that it described the aftermath of a decapitation, but Lead Belly made it almost gothic.

Lead Belly (real name: Huddie William Ledbetter) was extraordinarily talented but his rise to fame had much to do with what white people thought was "authentic." In the early 1930s, folk collector John Lomax basically set out to find "authentic" black music, "untarnished" by European (=white) culture, and plucked Lead Belly out of prison in Louisiana. He basically forced Lead Belly to play what Lomax considered "savage" music ("genuine Negro folks songs") even though Lead Belly's repertoire actually included mostly white country music. This was a classic case of white people looking for a "noble savage"; and if Lead Belly didn't quite fit the bill, Lomax created an entire fantasy around the man who was known to be a very soft-spoken and gentle individual. Note Lomax's description:

Leadbelly is a nigger to the core of his being. In addition he is a killer. He tells the truth only accidentally... He is as sensual as a goat, and when he sings to me my spine tingles and sometimes tears come. Penitentiary wardens all tell me that I set no value on my life in using him as a traveling companion.

This is not to suggest that Lead Belly didn't sing some pretty dark stuff, just that he was actually much more versatile and complex a musician than Lomax was willing to portray. Lomax made Lead Belly popular in the 1930s, but ironically during his lifetime, Lead Belly was much more well-known among leftist radical white activists (what we would call "hipsters" today) than with African-Americans. (His concerts in Harlem were apparently total flops). Which is where Kurt Cobain comes in. Cobain had a fascination with Lead Belly and recorded a bunch of his songs (I think they're still unreleased). But I think his genius with this MTV Unplugged performance was to slightly alter Lead Belly's version. Authors Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor in Faking It explain exactly what Cobain did:

He changed the first chord of each verse from major to minor (occasionally adding a fourth [note]), thus imbuing the song with an even more melancholy tone; he slowed the tempo way down doubling the song's length and also increasing its sadness; he changed the repeated words "black girl" to "my girl," thus erasing Leadbelly's racial perspective;... after singing all the verses of Leadbelly's version, he repeated some of them, first sotto voce, then raising his voice an octave... lending the song an air of complete desperation because of his straining to hit the high notes; and [then, finally] he sang the song's last words ("I'll shiver the whole night through") in half-time, his voice completely hoarse and ragged, thus adding an undeniably dramatic flourish to what was, in the original, only plain repetition. The result is a terribly haunting and emotional performance.

I guess those little changes combined together = innate talent (or genius?). Apparently after the performance, Cobain argued with MTV producers who wanted an encore. He refused because he felt that he couldn't top the performance of that last song. On that, he was absolutely right.

The Secret Machines

What's up with the lack of four-on-the-floor rock'n'roll in the world these days? To paraphrase James Murhpy, can we sell our turntables and buy back our guitars?

Since I wasn't around in the 1970s, I can't imagine what it was like for a real ROCK album to come out. You know, Led Zeppelin IV, or Quadrophenia, or Machine Head, or something like that. But I bet it was exciting to come home and put that needle on the first track, and an epic 9 minute mastodon-of-a-track would crank out of the speakers. Oh, to be 15 years old in 1972. But unfortunately I wasn't.

But ... if you want to hear a full-scale '70s rawk vibe updated for the 21st century, there is no better place to begin than The Secret Machines. Now, I haven't kept up with them that much in the last few years but their debut album from 2004 entitled Now Here is Nowhere is quite the prog ROCK album. Imagine if you will a Pink Zeppelin with some Can thrown in. The lyrics are suitably obtuse, the rhythms are motorik, and the drums are positively GIGANTIC. At the time of the debut, the band was basically two brothers (Brandon and Benjamin Curtis, who played bass/keyboards and guitar, respectively) and Josh Garza. Since then, Benjamin has left to find his muse in shoegazer band School of Seven Bells, but the band remains a three-piece with the addition of new guitarist Phil Karnats. In the proud tradition of the three-piece power trio (think Cream or the Police or [choke] Rush), they crank out some high stakes rock music. They are on this world to rock, not to roll, if you know what I mean. All their strengths are on display on this live version of the first track off of their debut, "First Wave Intact," a massive, MASSIVE song, in which all three gentlemen (the original 3) crank out some nasty monolithic riffs to pummel the crowd into submission. Enjoy

Celso Chavez

Goodbye.

Motor City Drum Ensemble

I've been jamming to a recent DJ-Kicks mix,  one in a long series put out by the !K7 label. DJ-Kicks started sometime in the mid-'90s as a compilation of electronic dance music (mostly techno but house also). Remember Kruder and Dorfmeister? They did one. Remember Thievery Corporation? They did one. Certainly there was a bit of a vanilla/loungey kind of vibe that's gone out of style but more recently the music has become incredibly diverse, incorporating a lot of really good and sometimes obscure 1970s funk and Afrobeat. The one that I've been listening came out last year, and was done by Motor City Drum Ensemble, basically a young Cologne-based kid named Danilo Plessow, who has made quite a name for himself. Very talented dude.

This is a stellar mix of jazz, soul, Afrobeat, Chicago house, etc. There's a lot of good music here, beginning with Sun Ra, Curtis Mayfield, passing by Aphex Twin, and ending up with Timo Lassy and James Mason. He throws in one original track too. More information here.

Definitely worth the $10. Get it on iTunes here.

A Whisper In The Noise

A Whisper In the Noise, a band from Minneapolis-St. Paul, has a new album out called To Forget. Here is the track "Black Shroud."

Greil Marcus

In the Spring of 2001, I was the TA for an undergraduate course called "The Roots of Rock'n'Roll" which was one of the best experiences of my life. (Long story). But either way, one of the things the professor (who profoundly influenced me in many ways that he probably doesn't know) assigned for the class was Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (which was republished later as The Old, Weird America). Now, I had never heard Dylan's Basement Tapes, and to tell you the truth, I still haven't really heard it that well--I couldn't tell you much about it. But I do know that Marcus' writings about these recordings by Dylan and the Band in 1967 tapped into something that I was struggling to pinpoint for a long time, particularly what it is about "America" that has so drawn me over the years. As an immigrant to these shores, it's a question that often pops up. I think most Caucasian Americans reflexively assume that people come to America for "freedom" or "economic opportunity" or similar notions. But my journey was determined by neither. Sure, I came here for an education but at some deeper level, what is important is why I chose to stay here. And that has to do with the standard of living, yes, but at least 50% of it is something more ineffable and intangible, something to do with American culture. It's not as simple as "popular culture"--most of American popular culture is patently horrible, self-centered, and execrable, but some of it has been deeply meaningful to me. And the culture that has been meaningful spans high and low and middlebrow, it is everything from Television (the band) to television (the object), everything from Joseph Heller to Flipper, from Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On' " to the Books' Lemon of Pink, from John Kennedy Toole to the B-52's "My Own Private Idaho."

Anyway, Marcus was one of two American music writers that have meant a lot to this journey of mine (the other being, of course, the GREATEST rock'n'roll writer of all time, Lester Bangs), partly because of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, a history book with a provocative structure and claim. I had read Lipstick Traces for the first time in college in the late 1980s, and like Invisible Republic, it also forced me to think in entirely new ways about things, in this case, about the writing and recording of history. In the book, Marcus connected seemingly disparate moments in twentieth century culture (Dada, Letterist International, the Situationists at Paris '68, the Modern Lovers and the Sex Pistols, etc.) to construct an entirely different history of the twentieth century. His claim was that the orthodox notion of history--big events, cataclysms, wars, politicians, social upheavals, generational changes, Elvis, Beatles, feminism, etc.--only tell one layer of history. Look beneath all of this stuff and you'll find another entirely different story. And to reconstruct this other history (or in this case "secret history") you have to make connections that are not at all obvious. Marcus begins with punk, particularly the Sex Pistols, but then the proto-garage-punk of the Modern Lovers but then begins to construct an entirely surprising history of cultural "refusals" that veers into all sorts of unexpected places. The blurb at Harvard University Press notes:

This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands—demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life—seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris—based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and ’60s; the rioting students and workers of May ’68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."

It's undoubtedly one of the most ambitious books on music ever written but it is also an unabashedly innovative work of cultural history. It's not an easy read but well worth if if you are interested in how culture can have as much power as politics or wars or technologies.

I mention Marcus today because Simon Reynolds (another great music writer, a British transplant who lives in LA now) recently interviewed Greil Marcus for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The first of four lengthy excerpts is now on-line. Well worth the read if you are interested in the history of popular music.