Stultitia Delenda Est

From: Me
To: Me

On the occasion of my 27th Birthday.

Lyrics are wonderfully tasteless and NSFW

I’m Fricking Awesome!

What happens when you combine cellular automata with a basic step sequencer?

Magic.

I may have posted this before, but I’ve been listening back through my favorites on SoundCloud and just found it again. It’s an awesome, 48-minute set of chill House music. I’ve been pretty obsessed with it the past week or so:

Trancemania Episode 61 ( Special Chillout & Ambient ) by krhyme02

Almost done with my oncall rotation, so hang in there a little bit longer and post volume should pick up again. In the meantime, read the gut-wrenching story of Vladimir Komarov, a cosmonaut who, to steal John Roderick’s words, “didn’t make it all the way home”.

He died, ultimately, because he knew either he or his best friend had to. And he chose himself. It’s a very sad story of the perils of “National Greatness” thinking, a government that sees its people as resources to be used and discarded, and, ultimately, the sacrifices that we’re willing to make for our friends and loved ones.

Related, here’s John Roderick performing, “The Commander Thinks Aloud” about another set of astronauts that didn’t make it home:

Blogging later. In the meantime, I’m readin’ a book:

You’re in the future!

A little something to get you started on a rainy Monday morning.

DJ Shadow, “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt”

I’ve been grooving like hell to this tune today. It’s a Bassnectar remix of Ellie Goulding’s “Lights”.

Found via the inimitable Giles Bowkett.

Artist: Sonic Youth
Album: Simon Werner a Disparu
Label: SYR
Release Date: Tuesday, 2011.1.25
Score: 9.5/10

I really ought to preface any review of a Sonic Youth album with a disclaimer that it is impossible for me to be rational or even reasonable about Noise Rock. I simply can’t do it. It strikes a chord with something so deep inside me that it skates well under my critical radar. You might as well ask me to be rational about my own child. Except that I don’t have any children. But if I did…, well, you get the point.

So my love for Noise Rock compels me to do peculiar things. Like buy most of the SYR series, Sonic Youth’s mainly instrumental series of experimental albums. The latest in this series, the soundtrack to a French thriller film called Simon Werner a Disparu is a great example of the best that the series has to offer.

The album is a lot more accessible than one would expect from the descriptor “Experimental Noise Rock”. It weaves catchy guitar hooks and well-patterned drums in with fuzz, clatter, and whine to make for an excellent, well-crafted record. The overall feel is dark and suspenseful, without ever feeling oppressive. The energy and pacing of the album are superb, and the composition exquisite.

A good representative track from the album is “Alice et Simon”. It starts with rhythmic, fuzzed-out guitar melodies and lock-step, high-hat heavy drum lines before dropping suddenly into ethereal, almost atmospheric arhythmia. It then slowly builds up into a mash of distorted harmonies accompanying clean melodies.

If you listen to no other track on this album, you owe it to yourself to hear the incredible closer, “Thème d’Alice”. It’s thirteen minutes of fuzzy, meandering guitar lines and catchy, laid-back drum hooks. It slides in, in medias res, into a clean lazy guitar groove, layered over top of subtle, fuzzy bass noise and backed up by machine-like drumming. This basic pattern holds throughout while morphing through a variety of themes and building to an incredible clattering climax and fading out over several cathartic minutes. It is a tune well worth anyone’s time.

That being said, the album is worth taking in as a whole. There are several textures and themes that reoccur throughout, giving the whole record a nice unity. In this way, the album is a compelling argument (if one were still needed) for the artistry of talented modern groups like Sonic Youth. This album lacks nothing in terms of artistry or composition. It is, both in terms of its constituent parts and as a whole, every bit as intricate and masterful as classical symphony. In fact, in profits from many of the same compositional effects that make great symphonies powerful, such as the excellent use of theme.

It is possibly that Simon Werner a Disparu might be the kind of thing that you have be a diehard Noise Rock fan to appreciate, but I rather think that it has just as much chance of making converts out of unbelievers. A lot of the tracks on this album are great examples of the basic idea that noise and fuzz can be as integral a part of music as a good guitar melody or catchy lyrics. And the album taken as a whole is a great argument for the fact that modern Rock genres can produce works every bit as significant, sweeping, and artistically satisfying as classical genres.