the column.































it's may. tomorrow will be six months of sobriety. et cetera--

"The Rest is Noise" is a great book: highly readable, very accessible and definitely not snobbishly academic. this book functions as all great music tomes should. the way it effortlessly weaves seemingly unconnected narratives keeps it interesting. "The Rest is Noise" is of course predominantly about 20th century classical music but the connections to other music genres are drawn and highlighted and some of the themes-tonality vs. atonality e.g.-make this book a worth while read for all lovers of music and serious headz alike. i am not a big fan of the new yorker either...

things are indeed not weird enough. not right now. but maybe i should leave the house? either way...

lately i have been thinking about "noise-rock" in general and Deerhunter in particular. summer of 2005 they were THE local support band for NY-based groups & other hip, small-capacity touring bands. basically their set would be 30 minutes of "feedback," which would slowly build and crescendo into the "Octet" disco-orgasm. i had experienced it so many times that i'd just watch the beginning unfold, go upstairs to the gay bar for a Budweiser and come back and they would still be doing that "wall-of-noise" build-up that would eventually come to irk and alienate so many bloggers and hipsters when "Cryptograms" broke. Me? i just chuckle at the thought of those types expecting some pretty ambient soundscapes (or at least some decent rock jamz?) and getting str8 noise. Ha Ha Ha. He He He. these are probably some of the same people that enjoy sigur ros or mum or like whatever they seems to listen to. explosions in the sky???

and yeah maybe i paid like $8 tops to see Deerhunter feedback. i miss those "halcyon" dayz...

Of course there are people who are going to pay like $225 to see My Bloody Valentine. i swear to God i wish that My Bloody Valentine would just do like an hour of nothing but feedback and that be the whole set and like a whole bunch of bloggers and hipsters rant about not hearing songs from "Loveless" or some other bullshit. Honestly, that is a highly over-rated bill to begin w/ and even with the assurrace that My Bloody Valentine was going to play both "Loveless" and "Isn't Anything" (which is of course my favorite album from that band) in their respective entireties, i still wouldn't go to that over-hyped, over-priced nothingness and plus i have a more or less life-long NYC ban anyway so yeah why am I "ranting?" tevs...


i like the Cocteau Twins anyway. someone call me when that band reforms.

anyway. \i fret over the fact that i only have one Noise LP and one Noise 7" but when you got one Noise record you basically got them all. right? maybe there is a Einsturzende Neubaten LP somewhere in the crates but i am not sure. (and I am not sure if it is any good.) lately i have been looking for Noise in atypical places like Techno or Rock or where-ever. i like to call it "truffle hunting," but it is what it is. of course my definition of Noise is extremely broad and diverse and "all-encompassing" so it makes my quest much much easier. soon enough i will go back to buying cassette tapes and 3 inch CD-R's and such of artists whom probably would be lost w/o a distortion pedal somewhere in their pedaljamarsenal, but alas...

oh yeah and here, (my favorite place to waste time, or at least it was...) a brief discussion of what season noise music sounds best in. or something like that. I say noise sounds best in the winter, but then again i first heard Merbow during Thanksgiving and that is when noise really started clicking for me so perhaps therein lies the reason why i prefer it during the winter but really for me noise just sounds more "visceral" during the colder months. just my opinion though. i have an asshole too but right now its' really really itchy.

so yeah. if you are not wallowing in boredom or you are doing interesting stuff or you spot any new "trends" or if you're having interesting sex or you saw somebody get shot or if you have a really nasty drug problem or you dropped out of college or if a pretty girl smiled at you today or perhaps maybe you recorded an interesting demo or if the month of may has been treating you inordinately well or something or just anything you figure to be worthwhile piques your fancy, send me an email or write me or something...

(oh yeah i saw Gridlock'd on basic cable last saturday nite and that really is a good movie. Ossian was right. Its kind of Kafkaesque, like "The Trial" or something, at least bureaucracy-wise. Seems like it was shot in Canada, like Vancouver or something??? But yeah, its a good movie...)

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