From Jeff Pitrman Sent Fri, Nov 13th 1998, 18:41
From Jeff Pitrman Sent Fri, Nov 13th 1998, 18:41
My reviews of shit everyone already seems to have. I'm so behind the times. Oh well, these are the various cds I just received from sundry people for my birthday. Bjork mit Funkstorung: Battle of the Umlauts, er, All is Full of Love Fatcat Rekkids Although most of the opinions I've heard of this have tended towards the negative/indifferent, I actually like all drei of these songs. The first one, the "In Love With Funkstorung" remix does in fact sound pretty Autechreish. Kind of like an Autechre cd skipping a lot while Bjork emotes at you about love. The Secondotted Remix is the same idea, but the words are rearranged and the beats are less cracked out. The track "This Shit" is a vacation from Bjork in the middle of the cd, and is pretty much the same idea. As an aside, let me note that musicblvd had to ship this cd a week after the rest of my order because they are a *really* retarded mail order company. v/a: Nothing Changes Nothing First off, this issue of XLR8R is really boring. Only buy it cause you want the cd for $3 if you do. XLR8R *used* to be pretty cool, for those listers who never saw it in its early, free and non-glossy days. Change is bad! Oh well. Someone just posted a track listing, so now you know what's on it. The cd isn't that exciting, actually. I like the Autechre songs, but I like them less than Chiastic Slide which I just got last month (used for $8 hooray), and I'm still listening to Chiastic Slide all the time. The Squarepusher songs seemed like the less interesting ones from Big Loada, which I don't have but now I don't know if I want. The Plaid songs are okay, the Meat Beat Manifesto songs are boring, unless you like MBM, and the Plug songs I have and I'm bored of so I can't judge them impartially. I can only listen to one of the Bowling Green songs, cause the edge of my cd turned out to be cracked, so "The Road is a Grey Ribbon" I only get to hear the first 2:12 of. It's a good 2 minutes though. Whatever. Less exciting than Funkstorung. DJ Spooky: Riddim Warfare Outpost and Asphodel, who are a bomb label This cd I didn't ask for, it was a surprise out of the blue from my girlfriend. I'm not really a "fan" of Mr. Miller, though I have that black-and-yeller record with the silver squiggle on the cover that he put out up on my shelf somewhere, and I do listen to it once in a while. I have to go with the consensus that when DJ Spooky starts getting heavy into comparing playing with turntables to painting with fragments of your mom that he sounds, well, like a complete fucktard. The music is okay. It works pretty well as a whole cd to play from the 1st track on to have as background music. I do have to note that when I hear Kool Keith mcing in a song, especially over fast jungle (good combo), I don't want to hear him talking about UFOs, cosmic rays, or adbuctions. He should stick to what he's good at, namely rhyming about girlies. Because, let's face it, when MCs (this goes for everyone on this cd) try to drop in the words "scientific," "optical illusion," and "elevation" to make it sound like they're actually MCing about something brainy, they're not fooling anyone. It just sounds like they're only at home in the lyrical milleu of 40s and hos and are overexerting themselves. Oh, and if you're a Sonic Youthy kind of person, the track with Thurston Moore is not particularly mindblowing, merely moderately hip. This one is less exciting than Funkstorung also. It's a lot longer though. Bjork Gudmundsdottir & trio Gudmundar Ingolfssonar: Gling-Glo One Little Indian I ordered Bjork & the trio Gudmundar Ingolfssonar cd _Gling-Glo,_ and the cd case arrived completely cracked and broken. My Boards of Canada cd took a month to get to me, when I ordered that a while back. Never go through Music Blvd unless you're misusing $10 coupons. Anyway. It's not IDM, it's not typical Bjork, it's Icelandic big band songs rendered in a pretty loungey jazzy way, and is actually pretty cool. It's not about to bump Harry James and his Orchestra out of my tape deck, but it's still nifty. If you liked "It's Oh So Quiet," this is the same idea. This one is about as exciting as FUnkstorung. It came out in 1990 though, so I was hesitant to spout my thoughts on anything this old. Mostly I wanted an excuse to spread my hate speech against Music Blvd. So, I guess my Funkstorung cd is the winner. Actually, Chiastic Slide is still my current favorite cd, but it was purchased too long ago to be a contestant. "According to the law of primogeniture this moon-cheese is mine. The UN? Ha! I spit on the UN!" [Pokey the Penguin] foo>> http://www.pobox.com/~jpitrman/