Tag Archives: Noah

Goat With a Thousand Record Reviews

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This first ran in Madeloud way, way back in 2009. So out of date, but hopefully still entertaining.
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The Aquarius Records website is just about the most mind-bogglingly erudite font of esoteric music I could ever even imagine, much less witness. Every other week the store releases a massive 25,000-word-plus new arrivals list. They’ve published more than 300 of these monsters, and all are archived and accessible through their impressive search function. The result is a gargantuan, thorough, hysterical, learned, thoughtful mountain of obsessively cross-referenced prose about every kind of obscure metal, noise, psych, roots, electronica, funk, krautrock, shoegaze, and more. Store owner Andrew Connors (better known as aNDEE to AQ customers) spoke to me by email about the store and the list.

When did you start doing your reviews of new releases?

Not sure exactly. 10 years ago? We decided to start spreading the word about the store via short emails, original reviews were more like one sentence. If we were SUPER psyched about something maybe one paragraph, it was mostly for locals, to see what was new and come down and buy stuff. Eventually, people all over started signing up for our email list, and as it grew into a proper mailorder, the list sort of took on a life of its own, and the reviews blossomed into ESSAYS haha. I sometimes long for those one sentence days for sure. But folks love the list, and we do actually love writing it. And a lot of the stuff we sell and carry, is obscure enough that people might not check it out or give it a listen without the reviews. And in the store, we take those reviews and print them out and affix them to the cds, so people can come in, and it’s like a bookstore, with the little tags on each record, which hopefully makes browsing through all this crazy stuff, easier, and more interesting and fun.

How exactly do you compile these lists?

By the seat of our pants unfortunately. It just depends on what comes in, what gets released. Stuff we’ve been able to track down direct from bands and labels. We write about the stuff we have been most excited about. Sometimes we include old stuff we’ve always wanted to review, sometimes there’s some new release that folks are dying for, and maybe we’re not insanely psyched about it, but folks want to know what we think…

Everyone here writes reviews, regular readers of the list can usually discern who reviewed what, although it’s written in a collective voice, a very eclectic, weirdly varied voice, some folks write more than others. I tend to write about 40-50 reviews for each list, which comes out every other Friday. We all try to write them regularly, a few every day, bit more often than not, it gets right down to the deadline, and we’re scrambling to finish.

Do you review everything that comes into the store?

We get so much stuff, that would never be possible. New release wise, there are probably 100-200 every week, then cd-r’s and lps and 7″s submitted for review direct from bands and labels, another 50 or so every week? Just not enough time in the day. As it is, I try to listen to every single thing we get in, but it’s gotten harder and harder. As for how we decide, it really comes down to stuff we dig. The things we find ourselves listening to over and over and over. It’s very subjective, but it’s meant to be, we try to find the records we love and then champion them. I usually compare it to making a mixtape, the new arrivals list for me is like a massive mixtape we make for our friends every two weeks, stuff so good you want other people to hear it and love it, and hopefully buy it.

Do you feel that the lists are worth the effort in terms of sales?

Absolutely. It’s one of the things that defines our store. And unlike most stores, we have this list that people who live thousands of miles away can read, and feel like they’re a part of. We try to make it fun and friendly and interesting to read, our regular mailorder customers generally become friends of ours, when they visit here we hang out, when we’re traveling we end up meeting and sometimes staying with mailorder customer. It functions the way record stores have traditionally functioned, building a sense of community, cuz sure this is a business, but there’s not much money to be made, if we wanted to get rich, we sure as hell would be doing something else, but we LOVE music, as do the people who read the list, which for me, DOES make it good business, even just on that level, music nerds obsessing about new records and new bands and crazy sounds, and because of that, it does in fact generate much of our business, people anxiously await friday night to see what new stuff showed up and to order a bunch of cool crazy music.

It is a lot of work, and of course sometimes we wish, we didn’t have a list to send out, it certainly affects how we live our lives, when we can go away, how long we can go away, our days off, the way we feel about music, knowing that if we like something, we’re also gonna have to review it, but I definitely think it’s something super special, and I hope other folks feel the same way.

Looking at these lists online, you sort of get the feeling that the store itself must be gigantic. How big is the store? How many records do you have in stock at one time?

That’s funny. It really does. And I sometimes feel bad when someone finally gets to visit, having come all the way from Japan or the UK, I feel like we should apologize for how small the store is, but almost always, people dig it. It’s small-ISH, but there’s tons of records, cds, plants in the windows, posters and flyers, and crap all over the walls, doors and posts and windows have been painted by artists, there are video games (a Tron, a Rastan and a Joust, and we usually have a Ghosts And Goblins, but that one’s broken), there’s good music playing, it’s just really comfortable and worn and home-y, the way a record store should be.

As for how many records we have in the store, only a fraction of what’s on the website. we’re usually full to capacity, but the cool thing about visiting is, there’s always plenty of stuff that is NOT on the site, maybe stuff we haven’t reviewed yet, stuff that we were only able to get a few copies, not enough to post on the site, some stuff that just won’t make it on the site, for whatever reason, not to mention TONS of awesome used stuff, and new arrivals and more…..

What would you say is your favorite review on the site?

One of my favorites is probably for the M83 record, when we first heard them, mostly for the last couple sentences:

“Now imagine [the album] as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can’t live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It’s that heartbreakingly good.”

What releases are you looking forward to in the next few months?

Definitely excited about the new Velvet Cacoon, long time aQ faves, a band from Portland who do a super blissed out fuzz drenched eco black metal. REALLY PSYCHED on the forthcoming Teenage Filmstars reissues, one of THE best heavy druggy shoegaze bands EVER. Some of us think WAY better than My Bloody Valentine (I know, blasphemy! haha), the new Bunkur, killer crushing slow motion ultra doom from Holland, the new Yoga, super tripped out murky droney sort-of-black metal, and also pretty excited for the new Arctic Monkeys…. and sure there will be more more more!!

Skating Above It All

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IB1

Is that a girl or a boy skating there?

Ken Parille, in a recent analysis of this Ivan Brunetti cover at tcj.com argues that it’s a girl, and, partially on the strength of that gendering, places the cover in a tradition of sentimental art.

With eyes closed, her face wears a contented expression. While traditional sentimentality sees a woman’s value as defined by her relationship to others (as wife, mother, daughter, etc.), Brunetti’s cover celebrates female solitude and introspection — a romance with the self.

When I initially saw the cover, though, I saw the figure as a boy — and the gender switch arguably changes the genre. As Parille notes, the person here may be engaged in contemplation, but she (or he) also seems to be violating the rules; he’s jumped the fence and is now skating on a chunk of ice where there’s some danger he’ll fall in. Seeing her as a her, Parille ends up underlining the ominous threat; “Her rebellious actions are admirable, even inspirational, but a little reckless. Perhaps she should open her eyes.” But is she’s a he, you might switch that about — it seems a little reckless, but even so, inspirational and admirable. She isn’t a girl in need of saving; he’s Tom Sawyer on an escapade. The figure isolated against the city isn’t inward turned and contemplative, but serenely pleased with his daring. The New Yorker readers get to identify with that lone figure, impishly crossing boundaries and frolicking where one should not frolic. The three drops falling from the title, which Parille reads as tears, might perhaps be seen as bright stars, confetti — a small tribute to the daring youth, and the viewer who dares with him (at least intellectually, in the way of New Yorker readers.)

Parille is probably right about the gender, as far as the artist’s intentionality goes (I get the sense that he’s probably spoken to Brunetti about it.) But of course no one can be right about the gender in an absolute sense; images don’t have gender really; a drawing has no genitals; even if you draw genitals, they’re just lines on paper. The gender is a convention, and part of that convention is genre — in the sense that the genre you see has gendered implications, and vice versa.

Though at the same time, I do wonder — are the genres all that different? Girls’ sentiment and boy’s adventure seem less like opposites, here, and more like a different way of looking at the same image; a gestalt shift. Is he mildly mournful beneath a sorrowful moon? Is she impishly pleased with herself under cover of darkness? Will they fall into their lovers’ arms, or answer the Bat signal? Which melodrama do you choose? Or will you stay, poised and refined above it all, avoiding those damply gauche pulp pleasures by skating upon a thin surface of ambiguity? Male or female, our iconic representative floats upon self-conscious, ostentatious whimsy, the genre of genius.

Freedom To and Freedom From

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Editor’s Note: Nate Atkinson left this comment on my recent post, and I thought I’d highlight it here. It’s part of our recent discussion on Censure and Censorship in comics.
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Freedom of speech arguments suffer from the fact that the word “freedom” has become a God-term in US liberal-democratic discourse. In fact, what a lot of commenters are calling a value of the left is actually a value of classical liberalism, where “freedom-to” trumps “freedom-from.” This isn’t an accident, as liberalism views that the individual is the fundamental unit of society, and thus views anything that restricts those freedoms as a threat to the social order. Compare this to a society that defines freedom as “freedom-from,” as in freedom from want, or freedom from threat. In those societies, a person’s freedom-to is more readily limited to assure freedom from (that’s where we get truly progressive taxation). Importantly, both definitions of freedom allow for democracy, though freedom-to is more encouraging of laissez faire capitalism.

So what does this have to do with speech? The smart-ass answer is that in a country where money=speech, the emphasis on freedom-to provides an argument for unlimited campaign donations. But that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it?

When we talk about freedom of speech we default to the “freedom to speak.” We forget that when we protect the freedom to speak we risk impinging not only on freedom-from speech, which is to say freedom from speech that makes the world a difficult place in which to live, and for certain people, to speak. Paradoxically, the unreflective privileging of the freedom to speak actually creates an obstacle to freedom of speech. And this gets me to the question of moral goods.

As a society, the US has a long history of divorcing politics from questions of moral good. There’s a reason for this, which is that the pragmatism of Rawls (and to a lesser extent Dewey) greases the wheels of discourse by bracketing questions about what is “true” or “good” and focussing instead on questions about what is legitimate and procedures for securing a consensus. As a result, assumptions about moral goods sneak in through the backdoor and elude sustained examination. Everyone just agrees that freedom is good without actually examining what freedom means, not only to them, but to others. Freedom-to is conflated with freedom-from, and we all truck along under a false consensus about what freedom of speech means.

However, if we unpack the notion of freedom even a little, we see the dynamic between freedom-to-speak and freedom-from-speech. This creates dissensus, which makes it anathema to pragmatism, but it also allows us to recuperate freedom of speech as a moral good, something to nurture and protect. This would allow us to discuss it as more than means to an end, a means that might or might not outlive its usefulness.
 

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by Winsor McCary

Utilitarian Review 4/11/15

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On HU

And we asked for some roundtable ideas. We got many, though still not sure what the consensus is….

Me on who is more blasphemous Stryper or Deicide.

Matt Healey on Ian King’s Pies, a furry graphic novel.

Katherine Wirick on OCD and why you shouldn’t name your cosmetic line after a mental illness.

Chris Gavaler on pulp heroine the Domino Lady and sexy chastity.

Kim O’Connor on how no one wants to censor you, comics.

I argued that free speech isn’t a moral good in itself.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Atlantic I wrote about Vietnam war reenactors and the truth and unreality of war.

At Reason I wrote about how protecting kids means letting them sext.

At Ravishly I wrote about:

—why all art is political.

—how anti-Semitism builds on racism.

—Joanna Russ’ The Female Man and the 2nd waves discomfort with femininity.

At Splice I wrote about the Chi-Lites, Alex Chilton and smooth soul indie rock.

At the Reader I did a little review of neo-soul artists Zo! and Carmen Rodgers.
 
Other Links

A couple articles quoted me this week:

Carl Wilson on how we should get rid of indie.

Tracy Clark-Flory on the spanking scene in Outlander.

And some other links:

Osvaldo Oyola on how readers of color rewrite black superheroes.

Brian Beutler on how all of us, North and South, should join together in hating the Confederacy.

Paul F. Campos on why college tuition costs so much.
 

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Censure vs. Censor: A Blog Carnival

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Megan Purdy hosted a Blog Carnival on Censure vs. Censor over at Women Write About Comics. I thought I’d mirror the organizational post here with links and such (as you’ll see, Kim O’Connor and I both contributed here at HU.)

The mirrored post is below.
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by Megan Purdy

Welcome back to WWAC’s irregular blog carnival! It’s been awhile. This time we teamed up with Hooded Utilitarian, Paper Droids, Panels, Comics Spire, and Deadshirt to talk about censorship. Here’s the question I put to our brave writers:

Censors and censures: What’s the difference? What is the social utility, if any, of them? What to do about the strange reaction to criticism of comics, where it’s all perceived as threatening, even post-Code, with Frederic Wertham invoked at every turn? Why are so many people so defensive, so Team Comics, about a medium that’s enjoying a creative renaissance?

Throughout the day, our partners have been publishing their responses. Here now, are all of them collected:

The Effect of Living Backwards, by Kim O’Connor at Hooded Utilitarian

And yet, censorship is an accusation frequently hurled at “politically correct” liberal-leaning members of the comics community. The accusers are, like, Tinfoil Hat Bulbasaur, sometimes even using words like self-censorship and thought police to describe what most of us would call a conscience. We’re through the looking glass, where the people with the most power and the loudest voices are the ones who worry most about being silenced. Potent industry figures like Gary Groth are waging an imaginary war against opponents (“opponents”) who have no actual interest in stripping artists of their freedom of speech. So let me say it once, loud and clear for all the turkeys in the back: Expressing an opinion—even a harsh one—is not equivalent to arguing for censorship. It’s not even close.

Censoring the World: The Fight to Protect the Innocence of Children, by KM Bezner at Women Write About Comics

Parents want to protect their children. This isn’t a groundbreaking revelation or a new development, and of course is completely understandable. But it’s impossible to censor the world. Restricting their access to books can not only suppress a love of reading, it can also discourage them from seeking out answers to the questions they will inevitably have about sex, racism, religion, and violence. It’s important to remember that challenging a book is a decision that will impact children other than your own.

Diversity: There’s Plenty of Room in the Sandbox, by Swapna Krishna at Panels

It’s a great time to be a comics fan. The industry is enjoying such an amazing renaissance, with diverse titles releasing left and right. More people are getting into comics, are interested in exploring and trying the medium for the first time. With an increasing emphasis on diversity comes increased sales and a larger audience. This should be a good thing. Why, then, are so many people defensive about the way things were? Why are so many fans resistant to these changes?

A Superstitious and Cowardly Lot: Sexism, “Free Speech,” and Comics Fandom, by Joe Stando at Deadshirt

Among these tricks are clothing their harassment in progressive buzzwords. Free speech is good, right? And censorship is bad. This is America, after all. So even the most sexist remarks by creators, the most offensive artwork and the most prolonged harassment must be good, since they’re “free speech.” Similarly, anytime someone criticizes said speech, it must be censorship, because that’s the opposite, right?

My Problematic Faves: On Censureship and Self-Censorship in Comics, by Allison O’Toole, at Paper Droids.

 We all enjoy stories that unintentionally do things wrong at times, but everyone has a different threshold for the kind of problematic content they can overlook. Personally, I think mine has something to do with other redeeming qualities in a comic. I believe it’s possible to point out that any story–comic, novel, movie, TV show, etc.–is deeply problematic while acknowledging that it has other strengths, and it’s up to each reader to decide whether they want to engage with that particular work or not.

The Morality of Free Speech, or Lack Thereof, by Noah Berlatsky at Hooded Utilitarian

For many who identify as comics fans, or as art fans, or as libertarians, or as some intersection of all those things, this may seem like heresy. Supporting free speech is often touted as a kind of iconic sign of open-mindedness; a stand against the philistines. Alternately, or in addition, to be against free speech is seen as supporting tyranny and that mighty argument-quashing shibboleth, Big Brother.

The Fightin’ Fans Vs. the Censorious Critics, by Steve Morris at The Spire

‘Mainstream’ comics, as they’re called for some reason, have been trained to react defensively to any new challenge – since Wertham managed to restrict the medium, fans and authors have wanted to prove that nothing will ever hold them back again. This led to some comics which went way over the line in their approach, and it also led to some of the strongest work in the medium. Right now, though, the comics themselves are being overshadowed by the people who’re buying them.

The Morality of Free Speech, Or Lack Thereof

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This is a belated response to the Blog Carnival at Censor vs. Censure, hosted by Women Write About Comics.
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Free speech isn’t a moral good.

By that I don’t mean that free speech is evil. I just mean that, in itself, free speech isn’t an ideal to strive for; supporting free speech, as an end in itself, doesn’t make you a better person.

For many who identify as comics fans, or as art fans, or as libertarians, or as some intersection of all those things, this may seem like heresy. Supporting free speech is often touted as a kind of iconic sign of open-mindedness; a stand against the philistines. Alternately, or in addition, to be against free speech is seen as supporting tyranny and that mighty argument-quashing shibboleth, Big Brother.

There’s no doubt that Orwell and his speech that was free could fling a vicious slogan, thereby making all around him shut up. But putting aside the well-worn phrases, what does or doesn’t free speech actually do? “Free speech” is not a guide for how to treat your neighbor; it doesn’t tell you how to do unto others, or how to behave with kindness, or decency. It isn’t equality or love or “do not murder”. It is a subset of freedom perhaps — but even there the ground gets murky very quickly. If freedom means freedom to speak, it surely means, to the same degree, freedom not to listen; freedom to shout in the public square must, by its nature, impinge on other people’s freedom to go about their business in peace. Why should freedom of speech trump these other kinds of freedoms? What gives it extra special moral status, so that it takes precedence over other kinds of freedoms, or over kindness, or what have you?

The answer is that there is no special moral status. What there is, is a special political status. Free speech is not a moral good, but the argument is that, in the modern community and the modern state, free speech is an invaluable tool for arriving at moral goods like equity, freedom, and happiness for all. Free speech creates a marketplace of ideas in which, the theory goes, the good ideas will gain traction and the bad will winnow away. Free speech is actually then allied as a moral good most closely not with freedom, but with truth.

This is a grand and appealing faith — but it is, still, just a faith. There’s no empirical evidence that free speech leads to truth, nor that it leads to more truth over time, nor that it creates happiness and freedom and equality, necessarily. The Bill of Rights was enshrined in a country built on slavery. The first amendment didn’t make slavery wither away either; on the contrary, slavery became if anything more entrenched over time. It was done away with not by argument, but by force of arms.

Force of arms isn’t a good in itself either, obviously. Lots of people, including me, think it’s an evil. And that’s really the best argument for freedom of speech; not that it is a good in itself, but that to stop it, you have to escalate violence. Speech can do harm, but the harm is generally less than the physical violence — such as restraining someone, or arresting them — you need to engage in to stop people from talking.

Speech can absolutely do good things, or lead to good. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother writing. Speech didn’t get rid of slavery, but it did help set the ground for people to believe that getting rid of slavery was a worthwhile goal. It also, though, led to people being willing to defend slavery in the 1860s, and racism in the 1860s and on up to today. The goodness or value of speech can’t be separated from the content of speech. This is why the much brooted dictum “I disagree with what you say, but defend to your death the right to say it!” is largely incoherent. If content doesn’t matter, if you’re not even listening to what is said before you defend it, in what sense can you be said to actually disagree?

You could certainly argue that the state shouldn’t police speech, because using state power against people is cruel, violence is bad, and the people most likely to be stomped by the state are those with the least institutional power. You can argue that the government should not be able to censor speech, because that opens the door inevitably to government censoring criticism of itself, which vitiates the transparency necessary for a democracy to function. Those are reasonable arguments. But they’re not really an argument for free speech as a moral good in itself.

In fact, in practice, the call of “free speech” seems like it’s often a way, not to take a moral stance, but to avoid taking one. If you support free speech as a moral ideal in itself, you don’t have to think about the content of speech at all. The nature of the speech — what it’s saying — is beside the point. Oddly, the call of “free speech” tends to end discussion. Once you’ve praised the speech for being free, what’s left to say? It doesn’t matter what you mean, it only matters that you mean something. Whether it’s Hitler or Ghandhi talking, it’s speech. Defend it!

But if free speech isn’t a moral good in itself, it becomes, not an ideal, but a tool, which, like any tool, can be used for good or ill. That doesn’t mean that we should lock in prison people who say things we don’t like, not least because locking people in prison is an evil as well, and often a worse one than the wrongs it purports to punish. But it does mean that if you defend vile shit, you’re just defending vile shit — though what is and isn’t vile shit can, of course, be up for vigorous debate. That debate seems like it should be on the merits of the speech itself, though, and not on the grounds that everyone should be able to say whatever they want in every venue. Still less should it be on the grounds that vile speech is especially valuable because of its very vileness. You don’t become a better person by championing revenge porn.

Again, morality isn’t legality, and for many of the reasons I’ve discussed here I think making speech illegal is in most circumstances a bad idea. But expression in itself isn’t a good, or a guarantor of virtue. Morality inheres in what you say, not in having said it.

To God With Hell

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This first ran on Splice Today.
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To-Hell-With-God

 
Some years back I got the chance to interview Daniel Smith of the Danielson Famile. The band is known about equally for its extremely idiosyncratic songwriting and its Christianity. When I talked to Smith, he explicitly linked the two. To create, Smith said, was to imitate God. God was infinitely creative and original; to honor him, therefore, you should be creative and original. When I asked him what he thought of most so-called contemporary Christian music, he looked pained.

Like Danielsson Famile, Stryper is a Christian band that’s positioned itself (more or less) in the mainstream rock world. They’ve essentially spent their career demonstrating that a Christian band can be as boring as a secular one, and vice versa. In that sense, their new album, The Covering, seems to be an inevitable culmination. Like the idiotic title says, this is (mostly) covers of FM staples.

Nobody says that covers have to be unoriginal. The Danielson Famile’s version of the Shagg’s “Who Are Parents?”, for example, is both reverently faithful and mind-blowing. Smith and his cohorts reproduce, note-for-note, the insane, dysfunctional, metrically-crippled Shagg original. It’s like watching someone drop a glass bottle on the floor and then perfectly reconstruct it from a million scattered bits so that you can’t even see the cracks. It’s miraculous in a way I think God would appreciate.

The Covering is not miraculous. And though I don’t want to presume about God’s aesthetic impulses, it’s hard to imagine how any being, finite or otherwise, could find much to like in this rote slog. It comes across as a kind of anti-creativity; everything is taken and borified by, say, 70%. The harmonies and cheesy proggy changes of Kansas’ “Carry on My Wayward Son,” are dumbed down with clunky drumming and pro-forma hard rock trundling. On Van Halen’s “On Fire”, Michael Sweet proves himself utterly unable to channel the bloated Vegas charisma of David Lee Roth, while some hapless guitarist demonstrates to a world that knew it already that he’s no Eddie Van Halen. And then there’s Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” Why, Lord, why? Best, perhaps, not to speak of it.

Stryper found someone else’s rut to wallow in; Deicide, at least, built their own. One of the classic eighties death-metal bands, Deicide has experienced numerous personnel changes, but little alteration to its winning formula — fast, hard, brutal death metal with blasphemous lyrics.

In fact, where the recently released To Hell With God gets into trouble isn’t where it’s true to form, but where it innovates. Early Deicide albums sounded like they were recorded somewhere south of your basement; the latest effort is more polished and crisper. And where, say, “Blaspherion” managed to be both propulsive and evilly slogging, the title track on the latest effort drifts perilously close to actually having a rawk-anthem melody. You could see people raising their lighters and shouting “To hell with God! You don’t want to be forgiven!” like they were at a High on Fire concert or something.

Not that Deicide’s totally lost their way. They certainly haven’t embraced the post-grunge emoting behemoth metal zeitgeist the way Metallica has, for example. The riffs still come at you like you’ve stuck your face in a ceiling fan, just the way they should. It’s only when you listen closer that there’s a little disappointment; the rhythmic, stuttering maelstrom of old tracks like “In Hell I Burn” are gone. “Into the Darkness” is fierce, but it’s a more predictable fierceness, like Pantera. And I like Pantera fine. But they’re not classic Deicide.

So would it be better if Deicide were doing now exactly what they were doing twenty years ago? Obviously that seems kind of pointless. Maybe frontman Glenn Benton should just have retired. He could have called it quits a couple of years ago when he had the crucifix brand in his forehead surgically removed, for example. But then there’s always the great beast Mammon to consider. The irony is that by sticking around past their sell-by date, Deicide may actually have finally attained the blasphemy they claimed to be going for all along. To Hell With God doesn’t spit on the deity the way Stryper does, but it does have about it the whiff of defilement. Those old Deicide albums though; I have to think they’re on Jehovah’s iPod.