Ramsayings

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.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Rewind.”

Back­stage at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last Tuesday.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Busy week.”

In word and deed.

But why the rush to judge­ment on Land­ed? Two albums after the depar­ture of CAN’s native shaman Damo Suzu­ki, CAN evolved into man machines, refin­ing their entranc­ing psy­che­delia with stereo fix­es. Can the crit­i­cism reduced to a ques­tion of nov­el­ty that favors the organ­ic and roman­tic over the cal­cu­lat­ed advances the band made in this period?

Maybe Land­ed is a water­shed moment for CAN for all the wrong rea­sons. Hol­ger Czukay engi­neered the record on a 16 track, a first for the band, giv­ing their mul­ti­lay­ered ideas and com­po­si­tions more sep­a­ra­tion and clar­i­ty. Few bands can boast as much musi­co­log­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion as CAN, but it’s not until Land­ed that their tech­nol­o­gy catch­es up with their abilities.

As CAN’s sto­ry unfolds in their per­for­mance DVD, the images of each mem­ber in gar­gan­tu­an head­phones are reas­sur­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing: astro­nauts need their space­suits to live, don’t they?

CAN — “Red Hot Indians”

The music busi­ness is a cru­el and shal­low mon­ey trench, a long plas­tic hall­way where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a neg­a­tive side.

- Hunter Thompson

It’s a ques­tion of extreme pric­ing and sale. If there is no indie retail to help build new bands, we are left with MySpace, the unfil­tered Inter­net, and ad/TV/movie place­ment to intro­duce peo­ple to new bands. Retail would be left to the Best Buy/Starbucks axis. That’s not too appeal­ing of a sce­nario to me.

- Patrick Mon­aghan, Pres­i­dent, CTD, Ltd.

Is there no alter­na­tive? The par­a­site’s only fear is the death of its host. Mairead Case’s arti­cle at Pitch­fork on Best Buy’s loss leader maneu­vers illus­trates how des­per­ate the record indus­try has become in recent years. But as I mouthed off at Her Jazz, not only is there a big­ger pic­ture, there are many pictures.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Mid­dle Man”