Saturday, September 02, 2006
80's post-punk, I miss you
Before we waited an hour to download a song, before Muddy Waters used busy drums, before Thurston Moore wore substitute teacher glasses. I'm listening to more and more pysch-rap these days. And I reviewed this up and coming singer, Alice Smith's new record (listen to "Gary Song") for Vibe. She used to sing in Greg Tate's old improv group and her record is like dancing in purple clouds of LSD juice. I saw Amiri Baraka sing his heart out at the Bowery Poetry Club two weeks ago, celebrating Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". Two days ago, I went to this place and heard two of Germany's best DJ's rip shit up for a few hours. Ellen Allien is way better live than I thought. And Apparat looks like Jonny Greenwood in person. I will post MP3's of the bands I talk about in my XLR8R column here soon. Other people talk about them, too.
I hate New York. Last week, when I saw Ellen Allien, Jamie Lidell was playing on a boat around Manhattan, Final Fantasy was plucking his violin, Feadz and Uffie were playing at the shit-hot Ed Banger party (which is France's dopest label right now, and one of the few keeping me interested in nutso dance beats) and there were tons of VMA afterparties (including one for Talib Kweli near the Hiro Ballroom) too.
Will be writing more here, I promise. Pace, Japan.
