a piece by me on xenomania -- the new exoticism/loving the alien, a.k.a net-enabled music tourism

it's at MTVIgggy.com (part of MTV World)

not forgetting this musical



plus

The Secret Life of Arnold Bax

plus

Ken's video for "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" by Pandora's Box, Jim Steinman's post-Meatloaf project

(which is weird because when I reviewed that LP I compared Jim to Ken, and I'm sure I never saw or even knew about the video)

oh yes and this, Russell's film about Isadora Duncan



reminding me of this





oh, and Ken done all these too:

1961 Portrait of a Soviet Composer
1962 Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill
1964 Bartok
1966 Don't Shoot the Composer
1984 Vaughan Williams
1988 Ken Russell's ABC of British Music
1990 Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner


obsessed

RIP Ken Russell



Ken's wacky doc In Search of the English Folk Song, so good i kept it on our tivo-equivalent for about four years, then when the cable box went on the blink and it disappeared, just had to buy the DVD



first time i watched Tommy, this scene was what prompted me to turn it off. but i've come to appreciate the film subsequently

are there any other film directors who've been quite as obsessed with music as Ken?







Liztomania -- "the film that out-Tommys 'Tommy'"!!

regular as clockwork, come november/december each and every year, there's new Moon Wiring Club product in the shoppes

the video for the first single off Clutch it Like a Gonk promises some new departures

when pop rocked



super graunchy guitar sound there

now this here Tommy James and Shondells tune doesn't get rockin' until about half-way through when a fab wah-wah solo takes off, that then becomes a fab wah-wah / fuzztone gtr duet. hang on for the weird-wobbly vocal science drop-out effect near the end



this doesn't rock, much, at all, but i always lump it together with "spirit in the sky" for some reason. 1970 too. Sideburns!



"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" = one of the first pop songs that made an impression on me, i could tell it was slightly saucy



not sure if i heard this at the time... hairy palmed stuff



pretty certain i saw Alice do "School's Out" on TOTP. "Elected" is my favourite though



makes perfect sense, this team-up

could almost believe whoever produced this had been listening to footwork

lotsa good stuff to read

james parker on bangs + works vol 2

leaving earth blog on reasons to be cheerful in this year's electronic music

reed scott reid on oneohtrix point never's replica

daniel lopatin on his favorite 13 albums




a feast of ferraro!
* interviewed by Elle (!)
* in altered zones
* in Dummy Magazine (in part 2 of this 90s-echoes/hypnagogia-moves-nearer-the-present piece by adam harper)



talking about Nineties: Giovanni Tiso at the 90s blog on Forrest Gump and much more besides


talking even more about Nineties (a different nineties, even): Kulkarni continues his triffic p***-r*** series at Quietus with a lovely piece on/interview with Insides. (With Main and Disco Inferno preceding it that makes 3 for 3 out of the 5 artists featured in my 1994 Wire piece on post-rock -- odd that, given that Neil's series is emphatically not about post-rock! What do you think, is the next one (on "the greatest album of the 90s") going to continue this run (could it be Seefeel? Techno Animal?) or will he do a swerve and write about Moonshake? Long Fin Killie?) (here's what i wrote about Insides back in the day, which was actually the very first time I used "post-rock", albeit adjectivally rather than noun-ally)



talking about Eighties (and a bit of late Seventies), Musical Urbanism's reet neet breakdown of New Wave's key figures/appealing features and follow-up post on same topic. (Been wondering for a while now if New Wave will ever have its day as a hip reference point/genre-mining seam?) (reminded me also that I need to get this book by Theo Cateforis)

talking about Seventies, greyhoos on Chris Burden

talking about Sixties (but also about now, and all the time in between) Robin Carmody on "the coming battle for the Beatles"

Matos's Oral History of... wait for it... the Oral History

more scrumptious word-cake from Reed Scott Reid, this time on Sun Araw's Ancient Romans

IMPLUVIUM (Official Video) - SUN ARAW from Daniel Brantley on Vimeo.

ardchive fever

303 at #3



now is that the highest in Billboard that Roland 303 acid bass has ever gotten?


actually no: it's burbling away in this US Number 1 hit from 11 years ago, just not quite as IN YER FACEly