Blogmove: HearCanal.blogspot.com

From beedubblyer.blogspot.com to HearCanal.blogspot.com

Why? Partly for convenience, so that I can run the blog using my current Gmail account. beedubblyer is being retired.

But also because using the old user ID as a blog title was starting to feel cringeworthy, too self-referential/navel-gazing.

So the new name is something of a corny pun, but it feels better than the old. Plus it's easier to spell. I won't keep changing the title & URL every few months just for the hellavit.

The bigger question is whether I can keep up with the amount of posting I'd like to be doing, especially when I'm blogging elsewhere too. The last few weeks have been veeeery slow on that front, but no more.

Anyways, hopefully see you there.

http://hearcanal.blogspot.com

Moving on: hearcanal.blogspot.com

Bye-bye from here. See you over at:

http://hearcanal.blogspot.com

Word to the Xenu.

One to watch: Palmitos Park

One of my favourite tracks of the last year, El Guincho's deliriously happy Palmitos Park, now comes with this inventively lo-fi video directed by Gerson Aguerri - greyscale cutouts and construction paper tropicalia never looked so good:

Who wins from a copyright extension?

So if the EU grants copyright owners, such as record labels, an extra 45 years to the current 50 year term, who will benefit?

Is it the massed ranks of struggling, obscure artists, who need as much time as possible to eke out the rewards for their efforts? No, not so much these guys. Think half a Euro a year, possibly reaching as high as under 30 Euros.

Or is it the top tier of artists? Artists who arguably have made quite enough from their records already thank you. Yes, I *am* thinking of The Beatles ('nuff cash), Elvis (totally dead), and P Diddy (crapulent, avaricous egotist). Partly them, yes.

Actually, mostly it's the record companies who would benefit. Instead of forcing them to update their business model, to find a way to operate that is relevant to this century, this laughable idea is just an attempt to prop up a comprehensively outmoded system.

+45 years does nothing for creativity
"Copyright is failing - so let's extend it!"

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals (Illegal Art, 2008)

It's difficult not to respond to a good mash-up. Simultaneously it plays to the indie trainspotter inside, as well as the pop-loving tune whore, the hip-hop poseur and the classic rock air guitar hero.

While I always thought of bootlegging as a European thing - thanks to the pioneering work of Freelance Hellraiser, the genius Poj Masta, et al - but this American chap, Girl Talk's mainstream-lovin' maximilist Greg Gillis, takes it to a new level.

The hits come thick and fast. And I mean rilly thick and rilly fast. Booker T & The MGs, Daft Punk, Ace of Base, OutKast, Procul Harum, Sinéad O'Connor, Cameo, Kanye, David Bowie, Avril Lavigne, Blackstreet, Radiohead, The Beach Boys, Faith No More, Prodigy, The Cardigans, Salt n Pepa, Metallica, Tone Loc, Jackson 5, Hot Chip, Earth Wind & Fire, 50 Cent, Underworld, Sly and the Family Stone...

Yes, you sometimes wonder what Gillis' relationship with Ritalin might be.

Because this isn't some lazy two-song hybrid, third song for the chorus. Nah, Greg Gillis stuffs more tunes into this platter than you generally hear in a day's worth of radio programming, hopping from one hook or break to the next with dizzying abandon. It plays like a DJ set, obviously, so I recommend you stick it on, ignore the tracklisting, and just dance around your living room like a loon.

Have to admit I flinched when I first heard the intro to The Cranberries' Dreams, but it recovers when the guitar chords crash (politely) in, with M.I.A. yapping away in the background... like so much of the record, maybe it shouldn't work. But it duz.

Just when you think you've heard it all, Afrika Bambaataa bumps uglies with the Velvet Underground. Curve's wall of guitars mauls Kelly Clarkson. Roy Orbison's You Got It gets drenched in glitchy beats and a barking rap, and is nuttin short of barnstorming. Then there's the unbelievable Groove Is in the Heart v Come As You Are v Push It moment. F*cking sublime!

If this don't rock your socks off, maybe you just don't like music.

Four animals out of five:


Full tracklisting compiled by top geektrainspotter here.

Pay what you want (free and up) for the ablum here.

The new sport of guitarist-tipping

Pity Noel Gallagher, now languishing in his bed with smashed-up ribs, which I can testify is no fun. Seems a Canadian oik sneaked up behind brother Liam and pushed him over during a gig.

But the funniest bit for me is Liam. Check the clip, watch as he backs quickly away from the scrawny little kid who found his way on stage... then when several bouncers have pounced on the poor sod, Liam gets all bolshy and starts trying to kick him. Only when the threat is subdued does he start acting the hard man:



Canadian idiot FTW.

Bloc Party - Intimacy (Wichita, 2008)

This is how it's done.

Intimacy opens with Ares, and a steel-whip guitar figure that doesn't sound like too vast a departure from the post-punk anthemry of their previous releases. Doesn't sound like a departure, that is, until the jacked-up Tomorrow Never Knows break comes in, a punishing groove that send the ablum hurtling towards the indie dancefloor.

The likes of lead single Mercury continue this trend, a gloriously raw and rockin' slice of electro with a surprisingly astrological theme:

My Mercury's in retrograde.
This is not the time, the time to start a new love
This is not the time, the time to sign a lease.

If anything, the raucous propulsiveness behind this dancey revamp feels like it owes a little to the Chemical Brothers. But it's not all disco-balls out reinvention: Halo, Trojan Horse and One Month Off are classic cuts that could come from any BP release.

Their invention is given freer reign here than before, and not just on the barn-storming likes of Mercury. Check the beatific choir on Zepherus, the shivering sonics of closer Ion Square, or the layered sorrow of ths sumptuous ballad Biko.

Sophomore ablum A Weekend in the City was something a retread of the debut, sleek but smeary, and lacking in hooks. This set is summink else, a thorough doing over of the Bloc Party sound, one that is welcome and not entirely unpredictable. Bloc Party continue to leave their peers so far behind it ain't even funny. Can you see Franz Ferdinand pulling off such an inspired and confident makeover?

Five planets out of five:


Pre-order the CD from the boys here.

Pleasingly random Mercury vid here:

Sigur Rós - Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (EMI, 2008)

"With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly". Naturally Sigur Rós have saved this title for the first ablum on which they the average song length has been reigned in to a very digestible four minutes.

What's impressive is that they've sacrificied little of their grandeur. In full flight they still sound like heaven's own marching band, orchestration crashing around in euphoric waves. Previously they might have spent a good five minutes getting to the pay-off, but now on the likes of Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur the compulsive xylophone hook bursts in at bar one along with everything else.

Which isn't to suggestive they've entirely abandoned the whole glacial thing. No, they've just made more sparing use of "continental drift" speed. Festival takes a good eight minutes before it commences its glorious, soaring climax, and Straumnes flirts with absolute stillness.

Much as been made of the first Sigur Rós song in English,
All Alright. But for all you can make out of Jon Thor Birgisson's delicate mumbles it might as well have been delivered in Hopelandic.

The Icelanders have sacrificed none of their strident joyousness, nor has the judicious balancing of the monumental and the ethereal - listen to the battering percussion and delicate piano lines that go toe-to-toe on Suð Í Eyrum. Credit due to Flood for his clear, evenly weighted production... when the number of musicians on a track creeps up to ninety, as on Festival, that's gotta be a pain in the ass to mix.

Rousing, touching, transcendent stuff. Every morning for the next few months I'll be wandering around my apartment, wailing along wordlessly.

Four geysers out of five:


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