Too much noise out there today. ...Much to sift through...
- Apples profits are way way up...boosted, surely, in no small way from the flush of music downloads via those iPads and iPhones purchased up in a swarm over the last two years.
- Jack White added another show at the Masonic last week and this morning saw youtube leaks previewing the former White Stripe's upcoming American Express Unstaged podcast directed by none other than Count Dracula/Sid Vicious himself, Gary Oldman. "...I thought of you, immediately," White says, when given his choice for director. VIDEO.
- We have what looks like a two-horse race, now, finally...but the United States of American Idol can only talk about how President Barack Obama did sketches about "slow jams" with Jimmy Fallon and how GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney should go host SNL as a response to pander to hipster youths.
- And, this morning on the Metro Times News Hits, we have a look into the growing pains caused when corporate-owned print media enters the comment-culling-blog-buoyed seas of digital age, while also stirring potential debate over what's quotable and what's not -particulalry when it comes to the City Countil, the Detroit City Council, during such a heated time as this, after a Detroit Free Press beat reporter recently was fired during his coverage of the city's consent agreement with the state.
- Meanwhile, I've got a new noise that's gnashing its way through my headphones - and I've decided to just let it's angsty, cathartic bellicosity and invigorating bass booms soothe my over-stimulated soul, for now.
- At least, I'm going to try to channel my own audio cave, a hideaway from the funhouse conveyor-belt hallways of the Internet. I'm going to try to listen to the new album, title
- by rap-punk trio
... InternetWorld can manifest itself, sometimes, in my mind as this vast, highly nightmarish break-room inside a condemmed office building, with exposed wires, dim lights and stained carpets trodded over by the billion-some-odd personnel who digitally/ephemerally occupy the reinforced cubicle work spaces.
We MusicHeads mingle by the water cooler gossiping about what's what, what's next, who's not and how this sounds like that if you took this and that and put 'em together inside a drum machine...
Every so often, one element enters the breakroom and all us doomed digi-stiffs step way the fuck back, palms out and elbows arched in a shrug like we-ain't-gonna-mess-with-that ...and as that element, that band, that striking streaming song leaves its echo in the breakroom, we gush with momentary sanctification... Any blog that Death Grips streamed across over the last year, any water cooler-klatch that it startled, has noticeably stepped back and let that exhilerating volatility ricochet its ferocious dynamism all round the room and then we just nod, yes...
This cannot be fucked with...
While we... I, rather, can always over-think these things and question whether I should just try to just stay and listen in my cave, ingore the Internet clammer over this Sacramento-CA-based trio and dash urges to apply exasperatingly-philosophic tests and zealous-reach-backs to history charting how we, what--the music press?--are always endemically ready to crown the next big thing - or at least quantify said-big-thing-as--the, often-more-elusive, 'real deal...'
I first heard about this group back more than a year ago when they dropped their mixtape Exmilitary. It garnered such intro's from sites like the Quietus as: "Displaying all the characteristics of a phenomenon in the making..."
Raw, caustic, industrio-clanged, space-punk-pounded jams, these were joints that busted the lightbulbs in the room and swung steel pipes into empty elevator shafts; so dark but so dazzling, twisted and tribal but undeniably sparking that deeply-seeded beast inside us that just wants to...jolt, bang our head, bring our own bracing fist into our sternums as we growl out, guttural, and therapeutic.
"Aggro-gothic..." is another word used for this groups rap-styling, also "sinisterly..." But this should speak to our punk-sides much more than the likes of the confrontational post-pop provocateurs in Odd Future, a group that garnered much more ballyhoo from blogs, albeit spurred, in their case, more from their outrageousness as opposed to Death Grips ferocious aggro-goth...
It's just that I like to be careful, treading this treacherous funhouse-office-building known as InternetWorld. Fervor feeds through the faulty ventilation system, the AC breaks and our temperatures rise, sometimes too quickly.
Fervor. It roils and spills with, sometimes, unexpected acceleration... Like, how last week, when Odd Future admitted they were getting upwards to $160 for t-shirts they were selling over in the UK, from their "pop-up shops." Fervor. The Internet is, at least somewhat, helpful for fostering Odd Future's image as hip-hop-Sex-Pistols - winning them distribution deals and a trip over seas for this ambitious tour.
Image. Fervor. Noise.
But, so far, with Death Grips, though, it's all in the tone of the hyperbole. Compared to Odd Future, the tacit implication was: how crazy, offensive, young, wild, dynamic... Death Grips' seemed to stir up much more music-centric raves, centering on their vision and the visceral impact upon the listener. Or, as Quietus put it: "...a monumental blow for the underground."
That's exciting. But be wary, here, on the Internet. Just listen....without looking...for what you've been told to see, or feel.
That aside, Money Store seems to be holding up to all of the clamor. And, you know, then again, maybe you're only just-now hearing about Death Grips... If so, dig in and then take note:
They come to Detroit June 18 - Magic Stick.
