The film board of Canada has uploaded the entirety of Guy Madden’s newest short film about a truly inspired man who attempts to distill the aurora borealis into sound and video! Amazing stuff.
Click Here to see the film in its entirety.
Also, Criterion has started putting some movies on Hulu. If this is news to you as well, go Here. And if you haven’t seen Knife In The Water, well the you have something new to add to the to do list. Get in there, kiddies.
Michael Rother, of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Harmonia fame, released his debut solo album in 1977 probably feeling quite ready to be freed of the success each of his previous groups had achieved and prove to the world just how little he needed collaborators to create his own works of perfect beauty. Now, this is getting to the late seventies, so the key word on this album is meelllooowww, as was common with any kraut rockers around this time, the zeitgeist was moving towards new aged and bliss out vibes. I’m all for this type of stuff because it’s undeniably dreamy and catchy but still weird and using those unmatched keyboards, oscillators and wacked out guitar tones that only the krauts could seem to find. I highly recommend this shit to anyone in a good mood. Also, while we’re here, be careful when digging for Michael Rother videos on the tube cause you might accidentally click the one where this guy is jammin with the chili peps and barf on your keyboard. Mine will never be the same.
Martin Rev, the musical brains behind possibly the punkest of all seventies punk bands, Suicide unleashed his out debut in 1980. Maybe it was the lack of Vega that made Martin create a very strange, but pretty and warm album that sound like if Suicide took a vacation and was gacked out of their brains on ecstasy. There’s certainly turns towards the dark and more classic industrial kick his previous work was so well known for but over all this album is a cool droned out exercise in electronic pop. I feel like you could watch the movie Brazil is fast forward while listening to this record start to finish and have a pretty good time. If you’re into that sort of thing.
Download: Michael Rother – Flammende Herzen
and
Time to switch things up around here. I’ve long thought about starting another blog for any other variety of things i feel like wasting others time with outside of music but that’s silly. I’m just gonna lift the mental barriers around here and try and make it more interesting in general. First mode of business with the previous in mind will be 100% self serving. I’m a graphic designer by trade and have just finished a decent portfolio. Feel free to take a look and give me some work. I’m extremely praferssionale!
more actually exciting stuff coming soon.
Finally, someone perfected muzick!
A group of dudes, probably equal amounts legend and failure in their own minds and neither to the greater consciousness, put on their favorite pair of sweat pants and buy some brew on the way over to the barn they’re all meeting up at to record some tunes as a team. Why get the whole gang together to dick around on a four track in a barn in the middle of Harrisburg, Ohio? Posterity? The hopes of combining forces into something magical? A greater musical ambition? Probably, no. Some people just play music because it’s the only time they’re happy, or rather the only time they’re not sad. Ego Summit is a strange super group on the scale of a group of naturalists who saved a rare quail from being extinct even though 99% of the world would have never known it had ever existed. Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Bassholes, V-3, Vertical Slit, Siltbreeze, Times New Viking all were either bands these guy were in or were entities that they effected greatly. Each of the five guys involved contributed songs and while some are stinkers, some are monsters. It’s a really neat record and document, especially if you’re a fan of their other work. It’s a desperate sound of some talented people who come off as more defeated than lazy. Luckily for everyone who cares, it was recorded for posterity and it is pretty magical but it’s certainly not ambitious. Thank goodness.
Download: Ego Summit – The Room Isn’t Big Enough
So my grand idea of doing some serous blog world domination and posting at an obsessive rate lasted a week and that week was a few weeks ago. I can’t convince myself to care but i will continue to try to keep caring. Anyway, I’m just gonna post 3 new Cleaners albums to make up for lost time. I haven’t even heard all these albums yet, so you might be about to embark on some serious aural gold diggin’ that your nerdy friend over here hasn’t even dipped his mussed up hands in yet. How exciting, right?! Ehhh, yeah well, Mr Martin Newell pumped out so many perfect pop ditties over the course of the eighties that chances of your opening up one of these lil treasure chests and getting sprayed in the face with a thirty year old booby trap are quite limited. He certainly always seemed like a gentle man in his songs. Very sensitive and earnest, probably unpretentious to a fault, if you look at it from a career standpoint. A bigger ego and crush on fame and these little tunes probably could have been everywhere, spinning on lil’ lucy new wave’s juke box and getting the teenage collectors a reason to wake up in the morning after John Peel should have played it the night before. Have you ever heard the story about Martin touring around England on a bicycle? Well that’s about all i know about the story, but how dreamy, huh?
Download:
Cleaners From Venus
Any Normal Monday (1982)
Back from the Cleaners (1995)
My Back Wages (2000) A Collection of Rarities
Hi, and welcome back to Cleaners From Venus Fridays. I had a long writing on this debut Cleaners album that i was fairly proud of and it just got eaten by wordpress. So i’m unreasonably frustrated and instead of re-writing it, i’m going to make a cassette copy of it and go walk around in the sunshine. I guess i could summarize what i had already written; This album is really good.
Enjoy! Stay Stoked, folks!
I will forever reccomend St. Patrick’s day, to now be referred to as St. Chilton’s Day.
My main man, Alex Chilton passed today and after a thorough examination of ever record of his touching i own, i assure you, the worlds loss is truly significant. In the young art form of pop music, few have had such a blinding and timeless impact as Chilton. His three albums with Big Star may be heralded now but it’s a scant near forty years late. Sure, i agree post humus appreciation for an artist is common form in our world, but surely none of us philistines can claim that this is ok, or even remotely acceptable. The human race has been plagued by mediocrity misinterpreting the work of geniuses since the dawn of the modern era but surely at some point we all must draw a line and encourage righteous self examination at what we see as favorable/ passable and what we understand to be artful and timeless. Alex Chilton, I, here at thee Biannual Haircut useless music blog, would like to send an electronic and pointless message to you in the afterlife that if you and Chris Bell start jamming again in heaven and let Joe Meek and or Jim Dickinson produce it, you truly have reinstated my faith in the wonder and grandeur of dreaming about the beyond. God Speed you, rascal.
And further below this is a repeat of a long ago previous and buried post featuring Al’s often overlooked solo works that i find to be misguided and beautiful.
What a strange career this man has had. At sixteen he sang on a number #1 single by his band the Box Tops, three years later the band finished without another hit. Starts a band called Big Star puts out three albums no one gave a shit a about, only to be regarded as some of the best music ever written a few decades later. Becomes an alcoholic and releases some genuinely twisted pop music that again no one at the time has any interest in followed by a few more years of pretty mediocre records. He’s produced incredible records by The Cramps, The Gories and Chris Stamey (as you hopefully already knew). His twisted sense of pop music that exists on his early solo records is just incredibly endearing in its pure honesty and sloppiness. Music doesn’t need to be perfect, how boring! So without further rambling i’ve got links to SIX different records. The first three Chilton solo records in chronological order of their recording dates and then a bonus of the three Big Star albums which you really should already have heard many many times by now, but just in case those have slipped through your fingers til now you can right the wrongs and come to understand the beauty and magic that exist in those songs.
These sessions are heavy bluesy buisness from Alex’s post Box Tops / pre Big Star period. His cover of Sugar Sugar is a beautiful indicator of his love of the slop. A grower of an album and solid all the way through.
Bach’s Bottom is more of a compilation of different recordings in or around 1975 and is generally inconsistent but Take Me Home and Make Like It is an all time fav. A great record overall, and usually pretty hard to come by. Obviously well recommended.
One of my favorite records of all time! Like Flies is top to bottom some of the weirdest pop music i’ve ever come across. Consisting mostly of covers and a few amazing originals, it was his first solo album to be released after the Big Star bummer. Apparently the critics hated it and it was only pressed in an edition of 500 off the bat. Soooo goood.
Also, do read this incredible and lengthy article that is probably the most in depth info on this period of Chilton’s career you’ll ever find.
Read this article for some pretty amazing stories about the guy
Big Star Albums:
#1 Record & Radio City
3rd/Sisters Lovers
Biannual Haircut 