Lis­ten: Demo­nolo­gists — Unhealthy Cul­ture

Lis­ten: Scott Walk­er — Clara

Lis­ten: Clipse — Ride around Shining

As quick­ly as hauntol­ogy arrived, it got bust­ed. Every­one laughed at last year’s EMP top­ic in whig­gish­ness as it applies to music and cul­tur­al crit, but Reynolds’ attempt at mak­ing spu­ri­ous link­ages sexy, if not plau­si­ble, is de rigeur. As inter­est­ing and well-researched as it is, Greil Mar­cus’ acad­e­mo-punk touch­stone Lip­stick Traces is still based as much on hard evi­dence and estab­lished dis­cur­sive com­mu­ni­ties as it is coin­ci­dences and serendipity.On that score, Pen­man’s scathing, hilar­i­ous rejoin­der is per­haps unnec­es­sar­i­ly the­o­ret­i­cal — it’s not hard to demon­strate how a vague cat­e­go­ry like hauntol­ogy is impos­si­bly bank­rupt pri­ma facie, right?

What might’ve been more inter­est­ing is some dis­cus­sion of how this haunt­ed music con­nects with present day pol­i­tics and soci­ol­o­gy, and how those things might inform the way crit­ics are hear­ing music these days. What makes so-called “haunt­ings” so inter­est­ing to us right now? What do bands like Excepter have in com­mon with Scott Walk­er? How do eerie beats con­nect Clipse and Bur­ial to the fright­en­ing hiss of Nacht­mys­tium and Xasthur?

For me, it’s the sense that vio­lence is once again Amer­i­ca’s cause célèbre. What was once over­shad­owed by Amer­i­ca’s mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq is the nihilis­tic sec­tar­i­an vio­lence of a bud­ding civ­il war. Domes­ti­cal­ly, Clipse’s chill­ing coke tales cap­ture the mat­ter-of-fact ele­gance with which Chris and Snoop func­tion as mur­der­ous Mar­lo Stan­field­’s angels of death in the recent­ly con­clud­ed sea­son of The Wire. In both cas­es, it’s just busi­ness, amoral and asym­met­ri­cal, with uncer­tain­ty and fear lurk­ing in the col­lec­tive consciousness.

Remem­ber Jan­u­ary? Before 2006 became the year that met­al broke, it seemed like elec­tron­ic music, whether it was tech­no or house, dub­step or grime, ambi­ent or noise, was on its way to a stel­lar year. Maybe it’s a tes­ta­ment to Amer­i­ca’s pop appetites and we’ve learned that we’re just not as omniv­o­rous as crit­ics ini­tial­ly believed, or more like­ly, had hoped. It’s a lament I share, albeit not quite as deeply.

Nit­suh Abebe [aka Nabis­co OTM] summed the expe­ri­ence up thusly:

So what’s scal­ing back on its crossover poten­tial? Well, the fact remains that it’s a tech­ni­cal record. There’s emo­tion (see “I Love You”), but it’s not an emo­tion­al pack­age; there’s pop, but it’s not a human pop album.

That, in a nut­shell, answers Mr. Sher­burne ques­tion about the oth­er­wise insa­tiable appetite for music Amer­i­cans, and maybe peo­ple in gen­er­al, are believed to have. Maybe Amer­i­cans are look­ing for those In the Aero­plane over the Sea expe­ri­ences in music brim­ming with more con­ven­tion­al pathos. Or bet­ter pub­lic­i­ty, cf. The Knife’s Silent Shout. After all, mourn­ing has­n’t cor­nered the pop mar­ket [or has it?] Maybe it’s just about infor­ma­tion aka triv­ia, mean­ing that at root infovores con­sume and digest materielle with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion of taste.
But Mod­e­se­lek­tor’s Hel­lo Mom! [tech­ni­cal­ly a 2005 release, but oh well] has pathos, but sad­ly nev­er achieved the sort of recog­ni­tion that gen­er­ates an ethos, which is just a fan­cy way of describ­ing these momen­tary flux­es in world-his­to­ry. The ele­giac “In Lov­ing Mem­o­ry” off­sets the glitchy hap­pi­ness that’s all over the record. It’s a rare reflec­tive moment on a quin­tes­sen­tial par­ty album. TTC’s “Danc­ing Box” [see above] and the rest of side one are what make Hel­lo Mom! so ecsta­t­ic, boun­cy and fun, rem­i­nis­cent of Mouse on Mars’ 2004 head­spin­ner “Wipe That Sound.”

In case you were won­der­ing where else I might be spend­ing all my time online these days, you can look no fur­ther than Paper Thin Walls. Keep an eye on their Bull­horn sec­tion for my “byline”. I’m new to the snark game so be gentle!

Jay‑Z may be get­ting cred­it for the great rock-n-roll swin­dle of 2006, but it’s hard to deny that Bey­once and her boo did­n’t cre­ate a media shit­storm to beat all this year. As Mr. San­neh points out, it may be dif­fi­cult to bal­ance that dra­ma and a career, but Bey­once, stun­ning yet vul­ner­a­ble, gen­er­ates more excite­ment than any oth­er woman in pop music today, hands down. Ques­tions about whether or not she’s still with H.O.V.A. only ampli­fy her allure. “Ring the Alarm” has her tee­ter­ing on the brink, uncer­tain of her foot­ing, fight­ing rumor and innu­en­do from all sides, a trem­bling David to Jay’s cock­sure Goliath.

Unlike the cries for help pub­lic­i­ty stunts that have late­ly gob­bled up newsprint every­where, Bey­on­ce’s unfor­tu­nate­ly titled B’Day deserves praise for mar­ry­ing real tur­bu­lence to her art, while Jay’s just shilling bougie brewskis.

Lis­ten: Moha! — C5 [Rune Gram­mophon, 2006]

Unlike oth­er Rune Gram­mophon artists Super­si­lent and Shin­ing, Moha! stayed well under the radar, although they got a pass­ing men­tion in Bran­don Sto­suy’s piece on Øyafes­ti­valen. Their halt­ing, spas­tic impro­vi­sa­tion sounds far denser than two peo­ple might pos­si­bly cre­ate with just per­cus­sion and gui­tar. Yet as “C5” illus­trates, Moha! whip up fren­zy in a way that would make Orthrelm jeal­ous. Atop apoplet­ic drum­ming, gui­tarist Anders Hana plays spiky riffs while his phras­ing oscil­lates between reck­less and razor sharp. Nei­ther tune­less nor tedious, Moha!‘s Raus aus Sta­vanger cool­ly com­bines rig­or and play, some­how bal­anc­ing equal parts Oslo and Detroit.

[This is the first part of a mul­ti-part, unordered list to sort through the pro­mo rub­ble that’s accu­mu­lat­ed on my desk and clut­tered my desk­top in 2006. With luck, I’ll post a track or two dai­ly to keep pace with year end oblig­a­tions. Of course, if I’m invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this, I may end up reshuf­fling the deck a bit.]