Stere­o­lab’s per­for­mance Mon­day night proved that the lega­cy of dreamy, intel­li­gent and polit­i­cal music dies with them. I can think of few oth­er artists that com­bine lounge sen­si­bil­i­ties with shoegaze noise in ways that so eas­i­ly lend them­selves as new sound­track mate­r­i­al for Bertoluc­ci’s The Con­formist. If this tour and com­pi­la­tion prove their swan song, it would be a strange end for a polit­i­cal band exist­ing in decid­ed­ly apo­lit­i­cal times.

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Mass hys­te­ri­a’s just the fash­ion. Let’s get togeth­er to cel­e­brate soon.

The New York Times reports today:

Plac­ards post­ed by sol­diers at the deten­tion area advised, “NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.” The slo­gan, as one Defense Depart­ment offi­cial explained, reflect­ed an adage adopt­ed by Task Force 6–26: “If you don’t make them bleed, they can’t pros­e­cute for it.” Accord­ing to Pen­ta­gon spe­cial­ists who worked with the unit, pris­on­ers at Camp Nama often dis­ap­peared into a deten­tion black hole, barred from access to lawyers or rel­a­tives, and con­fined for weeks with­out charges. “The real­i­ty is, there were no rules there,” anoth­er Pen­ta­gon offi­cial said.

Him­sa — “The Destroyer”

When Pave­ment broke up, it was imme­di­ate­ly clear that lead singer and song­writer Stephen Malk­mus was about to embark on a jour­ney that was as much ped­a­gog­i­cal as it was cre­ative. Long viewed as some­thing of a prophet to indie rock­’s faith­ful, it came as no sur­prise that as he fell into the Anglo-Amer­i­can garage, psych, folk and prog mix that those mean­der­ings would reach a curi­ous, def­er­en­tial audi­ence. Soon bands like Mel­low Can­dle, Fair­port Con­ven­tion and J.K. & Co. were count­ed among Malk­mus’ many ref­er­ences made less obscure, and thanks to labels like Sun­dazed, once out of print discs were avail­able again.

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Ser­e­na-Maneesh got a fog­gy notion.

As the late reviews begin to pour in, it’s fair to say that there’s more to this band than Nor­we­gian charm and p.r. smoke and mir­rors. Try­ing to ascer­tain their den­si­ty is anoth­er mat­ter entire­ly, but between the youth­ful bliss of the Fixxa­tions E.P. and their new self-titled record, some­thing changed. Keep an eye on Dust­ed Mag­a­zine for more.

Last Thurs­day night was long and wavy. Neo-psych — call it freak­folk, call it noise, call it a shoegaze revival — is plentiful…and cova­lent. Now Espers is tour­ing with Stere­o­lab, Dun­gen remix­es Mia Doi Todd and it’s clear that some­thing’s hap­pen­ing. Whether or not this is just a pass­ing trend in a sub­cul­tur­al ghet­to remains to be seen, but the mass cul­tur­al mind­fuck has been dis­tilled into ambiva­lent, gauzy polyrhythms and aching guitars.

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