Album Club?

Salix Babylonika

Basically I was just thinking we could like pick an album each week or something and then swap it over mediafire or rapidgator or something.

would anyone be interested?

PhantomThiefXI

http://www.4shared.com/rar/xADt9q_k/itou_kanako_another_best.html

i had this prepared for this day

Salix Babylonika

Yeah we're not doing it yet.

Salix Babylonika

also these should only be swapped via private messages because LOL TERMS OF USE VIOLATIONS

thenamelesssamurai

I'm definitely down with that. Might be cool to do a live exchange where everyone plays their albums and chats, via plug.dj or mumu.

Tre

OR TURNTABLE.FM, DAMMIT

I'm in.

thenamelesssamurai

Never really liked Turntable.fm. Still an option though.

Salix Babylonika

thenamelesssamurai said:

I'm definitely down with that. Might be cool to do a live exchange where everyone plays their albums and chats, via plug.dj or mumu.

I think those both prohibit you from playing more than a few songs by the same artist in a row. Also that requires a really good internet connection.

Tre

That one is my favorite. Because I have terrible taste. :p

thenamelesssamurai

Mojave Music said:

I think those both prohibit you from playing more than a few songs by the same artist in a row. Also that requires a really good internet connection.

Never heard of that restriction. Hasn't stopped me from playing whole albums on both of those sites.

Fair point about the internet connection though. How good/bad is your internet connection?

Salix Babylonika

It fluctuates. Some days it's awesome, other days it's fucking terrible.

thenamelesssamurai

Ah. That's kind of a pain. Still, I'm in either way.

sunn wolf

yeah why not. sounds cool

Sredni Vashtar

I am also in for this.

Salix Babylonika

OK so I guess we're legitly doing this.

Y'all know the drill. Select an album, we'll use an RNG to pick which one goes first. PM download/streaming/whatever links to everyone in the club afterward.

everyone think of an album to submit while I think of an album to submit.

Salix Babylonika

anyone at all?

sunn wolf

oh i just saw this sure i will think of an album i want to let everyone hear

Sredni Vashtar

I have a few suggestions...

*pulls out phonebook*

Salix Babylonika

OK. So I have my submission. Araabmuzik's Electronic Dream, because it is everything both right and wrong with modern hip-hop.

Does anyone else have their suggestifications?

KJI

Generally, I use albums as razors or knives. But they work as clubs too, I suppose.

Gas - Pop can be submitted by a person that is not me. 

Salix Babylonika

well alright then.

Does anyone else have their submissions?

Tre

Hmmm. I have no idea what to put without seeming overly mainstream and/or sheep-y.

I'll figure something out.

Salix Babylonika

you don't need to worry about that, really.

But forsrs does anyone else have their submissions? I ain't doing it if it's less than five people.

Tre

Alrighty.

Weezer's first album, Weezer. That's the blue one from 1994.

sunn wolf

okay after some debating i have decided im going to introduce all yall to the ridiculous amounts of library music that my glorious country is producing, also one of my favourites of this year, The Belbury Tales by Belbury Poly

Salix Babylonika

library music?

also my submission has changed to Sbtrkt's self-titled debut, because everyone felt the need to listen to it beforehand. |:|

sunn wolf

cool one of my friends has the sbtrkt cd and ive been meaning to listen to it for a while anyway

and library music is like music with a lot of its sources and if not sources then inspiration in commissioned/soundtrack music from a few decades ago now, in the case of the english scene at the moment heavily influenced by public service broadcast soundtracks/the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. this also gets called 'hauntology' a lot and you can read about it here (http://www.last.fm/tag/hauntology/wiki) but i think appropriating a term from derrida comes across as being over-academic about it.

Salix Babylonika

Interesting. The only artist I'm at all familiar with on there is Ariel Pink, would you say that's an appropriate inclusion into the genre?

sunn wolf

also library music can define the literal music from a couple of decades ago, stuff that composers would write + record and put in a 'library' and then people could pay to use it, or specific soundtracks. stuff like that.

trying to define 'library music' is weird. especially since modern artists started producing "library music".

the real old stuff can be like this:

Salix Babylonika

oh wow, that's some funky stuff.

I like this. I like this a lot. :D

sunn wolf

Mojave Music said:

Interesting. The only artist I'm at all familiar with on there is Ariel Pink, would you say that's an appropriate inclusion into the genre?

... kind of weird that hes on the hauntology page. i wouldnt put him in with that specific scene - though, just from what i am heard, its very possible that he was influenced by wider library music

sunn wolf

Mojave Music said:

oh wow, that's some funky stuff.

I like this. I like this a lot. :D

yeah that song is cool as hell. belbury poly is a little different - owes more a debt to 70s/80s synth music as opposed to being straight up funky stuff, but... eh im not going to spoil it any more, wait and listen!!

thenamelesssamurai

I still have to upload it, but my album is Bereshit by The Cracow Klezmer Band.

Salix Babylonika

shit, maybe I should pick something half the forum hasn't heard already.

gwagh.

this is hard.

Sredni Vashtar

My submission is The Battle of Electricity by The Gerbils, because I doubt that anyone else here is going to post an album like this any time soon. It also happens to be a really great and underrated album, so that's something.

criminalscum

At the risk of unintentionally trolling HH, My Teenage Dream Ended by Farrah Abraham.

Salix Babylonika

inkblot_v2 said:

At the risk of unintentionally trolling HH, My Teenage Dream Ended by Farrah Abraham.

??

anyway, I'll give it til tonight for me to come up with something else, and then I will assign numbers to each submission and we'll start picking them.

Salix Babylonika

ok I just decided to go with the Sbtrkt idea because fuck it.

Alright, going in order of submission, here's the current albums and their selected numbers.

1. Mojave Music -- Sbtrkt by Sbtrkt.
2. KJI -- Pop by Gas
3. Tre -- Weezer (aka The Blue Album) by Weezer
4. sunn wolf -- The Belbury Tales by Belbury Poly
5. thenamelesssamurai -- Bereshit by The Cracow Klezmer Band
6. Sredni Vashtar -- The Battle of Electricity by The Gerbils
7. inkblot -- My Teenage Dream Ended by Farrah Abraham

I am now going to go find an RNG and we'll use that to pick the order we'll listen to the albums in.

Salix Babylonika

and here are our numbers

7
3
6
2
4
1
5

in order, that's 

My Teenage Dream Ended
Weezer
The Battle of Electricity
Pop
The Belbury Tales
Sbtrkt
and Bereshit

here's how this is gonna work. You will need to put your file in a .zip, and title that .zip "hh album submission" (in the second round, you'll call it "hh album submission 2" and so on), and then upload it to a filesharing service.

After you do this, make a PM thread with all the members of the album club included in it, and post the link.

Sredni Vashtar

OK.

Salix Babylonika

actually hold on, I can make the PM thread.

criminalscum

Give me about an hour, I just woke up. You could skip to the next album if you want.

Salix Babylonika

k

Salix Babylonika

The Farrah Abraham album

just

agh.

Why would you recommend this? Agh.

Agh.

I actually listened to this shit and seriously what is wrong with you.

This is the musical version of a holocaust joke.

2/10

Obā-san

What is outsider art outside of? Farrah Abraham’s My Teenage Dream Ended lays bare this question in making manifest the fact that, in the postmodern era, there is no outside. We are all trapped in socio-political systems that resist the possibility of imagining an alternative, but we’re also trapped with our Selves and, worse, doomed to reflect perpetually upon our own Self, the secular reincarnation of the soul. But as we grasp for this Self, it fractures, proves itself unstable, unsatisfactory, made up of fragments of self-help cliché and half-remembered earworms. And as we seek to merge the evanescence of mandated “flexibility” and “innovation” with the coalescence demanded by “actualization” and “validation,” we have no place to rest, existing in a state of perpetual anxiety. All that is solid melts into air, but we are now chasing the evaporated phantoms themselves.

In other words, MTDE is the sound of a postmodern nervous breakdown. In being so, paradoxically, it creates its own weird authenticity. Sonically, we encounter the fresh, shard-like ruins of contemporary dance-pop, each beat or fragment teasing but failing to resolve into regularity. Over this, Abraham intones in a voice masked by Auto-Tune so consistently and heavily applied that it speaks to the alienation of the recorded voice — the impossible struggle to hear oneself truly, and the typical recoil — as well as the fact that emotions recorded can never be commensurate with phenomenological experience, particularly given that all language available for such expression is now stereotype.

Is it absurd to take a piece like this seriously? Not in the opinion of much of the indie music world (to the howls of an outraged crowd who think the term “music” is itself a positive value judgement). If you didn’t know, Abraham herself came to prominence as a participant on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant and, subsequently, Teen Mom. Critics might bewail MTDE as evidence of the tastelessness with which celebrity culture — more precisely and tellingly, “reality as a genre” — elevates figures like Abraham: “the sleep of reason produces monsters” (as modernity would have it). One wonders whether the cultural gatekeepers, if that role even exists, should feed these trends, whether that in itself is a political and artistic abdication. Are we celebrating ignorance in the desire to appear culturally relevant or, worse, considering as a purpose in itself the game of finding highbrow in lowbrow, an all too common and regrettable depoliticization of the original impetus of Cultural Studies?

One way the above critique can be incorporated into an appreciation of MTDE is to read it as that classic internet saw, “so bad it’s good… and can be loved ironically,” along the lines of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” (which has become the standard critical point of reference) or as an example of unselfconscious camp. But these readings don’t do justice to the seriousness with which we can take the piece. Musically, this is not “cheesy pop,” but cheesy pop taken apart and stitched back together à la Frankenstein’s creation, with the same horrific-tragic outcome.

On the one hand, Abraham is a typical reality subject, in the nature of her concerns and the unbounded spillage with which they make their way into the public domain. The album is an accompaniment to her autobiographical book of the same name (reader, your humble scribe’s dedication did not extend to reading the volume in question). But there’s something here too about trauma and the response to trauma — the tragic death of Derek Underwood, the father of Abraham’s child. The empathy that should be forthcoming for such a situation has often been lost in responses to the album and to Abraham’s persona. The suffering represented on MTDE is not the queasy interpretation of abuse or self-destructiveness as “edginess” familiar since the Romantics. It is, however, written into the music not only lyrically, but in terms of form.

As well as this, though, MTDE is a reflection and magnification of the typical issues of the teen Self (love, sex, parents, partying, drugs). In this aspect of the album, we see that the interesting thing about celebrity culture is not its individual content as such, but precisely the way in which celebrity writes large the now-universal relationship to (deconstructing and improving) the Self in a way that is simultaneously utterly shallow yet deeply human and heartfelt, a cry of pain and desire for transcendence based on nothing more than “being oneself” (Abraham’s website takes .me as its domain, and this is exactly the domain to which the album transports the listener).

But let’s put Abraham’s “me” aside: to ask whether the weirdness of her album was intentional (if at all) is not an interesting question, precisely because of the accuracy of the place from which it reflects the contemporary situation. One review invokes Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, and Dada, only to take it back as sarcasm… but why, when it’s this very mode, the uncomfortable inability to solidify one’s voice, that is precisely at issue? All questions of zeitgeist aside, MTDE is also an album that creates a unique mood, one that stands up to repeated listens, rather than being a single-listen concept novelty piece. We can approach this work, then, bearing in mind the principle of the death of the author. But the problem it embodies is not the fact that the author’s intentions are irrelevant. Rather, the author’s Self itself is irrelevant, because it now encompasses the world, magnified — and in that magnification, reveals the seams.

9/10

Salix Babylonika

Naney said:

What is outsider art outside of? Farrah Abraham’s My Teenage Dream Ended lays bare this question in making manifest the fact that, in the postmodern era, there is no outside. We are all trapped in socio-political systems that resist the possibility of imagining an alternative, but we’re also trapped with our Selves and, worse, doomed to reflect perpetually upon our own Self, the secular reincarnation of the soul. But as we grasp for this Self, it fractures, proves itself unstable, unsatisfactory, made up of fragments of self-help cliché and half-remembered earworms. And as we seek to merge the evanescence of mandated “flexibility” and “innovation” with the coalescence demanded by “actualization” and “validation,” we have no place to rest, existing in a state of perpetual anxiety. All that is solid melts into air, but we are now chasing the evaporated phantoms themselves.

In other words, MTDE is the sound of a postmodern nervous breakdown. In being so, paradoxically, it creates its own weird authenticity. Sonically, we encounter the fresh, shard-like ruins of contemporary dance-pop, each beat or fragment teasing but failing to resolve into regularity. Over this, Abraham intones in a voice masked by Auto-Tune so consistently and heavily applied that it speaks to the alienation of the recorded voice — the impossible struggle to hear oneself truly, and the typical recoil — as well as the fact that emotions recorded can never be commensurate with phenomenological experience, particularly given that all language available for such expression is now stereotype.

Is it absurd to take a piece like this seriously? Not in the opinion of much of the indie music world (to the howls of an outraged crowd who think the term “music” is itself a positive value judgement). If you didn’t know, Abraham herself came to prominence as a participant on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant and, subsequently, Teen Mom. Critics might bewail MTDE as evidence of the tastelessness with which celebrity culture — more precisely and tellingly, “reality as a genre” — elevates figures like Abraham: “the sleep of reason produces monsters” (as modernity would have it). One wonders whether the cultural gatekeepers, if that role even exists, should feed these trends, whether that in itself is a political and artistic abdication. Are we celebrating ignorance in the desire to appear culturally relevant or, worse, considering as a purpose in itself the game of finding highbrow in lowbrow, an all too common and regrettable depoliticization of the original impetus of Cultural Studies?

One way the above critique can be incorporated into an appreciation of MTDE is to read it as that classic internet saw, “so bad it’s good… and can be loved ironically,” along the lines of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” (which has become the standard critical point of reference) or as an example of unselfconscious camp. But these readings don’t do justice to the seriousness with which we can take the piece. Musically, this is not “cheesy pop,” but cheesy pop taken apart and stitched back together à la Frankenstein’s creation, with the same horrific-tragic outcome.

On the one hand, Abraham is a typical reality subject, in the nature of her concerns and the unbounded spillage with which they make their way into the public domain. The album is an accompaniment to her autobiographical book of the same name (reader, your humble scribe’s dedication did not extend to reading the volume in question). But there’s something here too about trauma and the response to trauma — the tragic death of Derek Underwood, the father of Abraham’s child. The empathy that should be forthcoming for such a situation has often been lost in responses to the album and to Abraham’s persona. The suffering represented on MTDE is not the queasy interpretation of abuse or self-destructiveness as “edginess” familiar since the Romantics. It is, however, written into the music not only lyrically, but in terms of form.

As well as this, though, MTDE is a reflection and magnification of the typical issues of the teen Self (love, sex, parents, partying, drugs). In this aspect of the album, we see that the interesting thing about celebrity culture is not its individual content as such, but precisely the way in which celebrity writes large the now-universal relationship to (deconstructing and improving) the Self in a way that is simultaneously utterly shallow yet deeply human and heartfelt, a cry of pain and desire for transcendence based on nothing more than “being oneself” (Abraham’s website takes .me as its domain, and this is exactly the domain to which the album transports the listener).

But let’s put Abraham’s “me” aside: to ask whether the weirdness of her album was intentional (if at all) is not an interesting question, precisely because of the accuracy of the place from which it reflects the contemporary situation. One review invokes Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, and Dada, only to take it back as sarcasm… but why, when it’s this very mode, the uncomfortable inability to solidify one’s voice, that is precisely at issue? All questions of zeitgeist aside, MTDE is also an album that creates a unique mood, one that stands up to repeated listens, rather than being a single-listen concept novelty piece. We can approach this work, then, bearing in mind the principle of the death of the author. But the problem it embodies is not the fact that the author’s intentions are irrelevant. Rather, the author’s Self itself is irrelevant, because it now encompasses the world, magnified — and in that magnification, reveals the seams.

9/10

this pasta needs more sauce.

Tre

Listening to it on Spotify now.

... I don't know whether I even should argue if this is art or not, but I have to say "Caught in the Act" is the longest song I've listened to in forever that's less than 2 minutes.

Quite frankly, I'm actually glad to hear ads interspersed into it.

Obā-san

but srsly

I ended up enjoying it in the same way that I enjoy The Shaggs, the stubbornly out-of-tune autotune, nonsensical song structures...

The album highlight has to be On My Own, which reminds me of Aphex Twin, with the flat, emotionally dull melody and chopped up breakbeat, only better because of the vox.

7/10, intent to purchace

Salix Babylonika

Naney said:

but srsly

I ended up enjoying it in the same way that I enjoy The Shaggs, the stubbornly out-of-tune autotune, nonsensical song structures...

to be fair I don't find the shaggs at all enjoyable either, and I think what their parents did to them was horrible.

This doesn't even have that excuse and given his comments I'm pretty sure inkblot only submitted it to be a douche.

As for me, I actually went through the trouble of deleting this from my computer. I've heard avant-garde art before, and that's not this. This is just terrible, I hated it, and I never want to hear it again.

Tre

Okay, so I finished it.

All I will say is that I was reminded of this, repeatedly.

sunn wolf

In places, it's listenable. Consider the beginning of 'Liar Liar' - that could be a legitimate thing. Is this a legitimate thing? What is legitimate? Did she actually just say the phrase 'pants on fire' in this song? I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I also don't know if I enjoy Ms. Abraham's album ironically, unironically, counter-ironically, post-ironically, or even if I can say whether the word 'like' applies to this - wait, fuck, did she just say 'hope plus hate equals heart?'

Drawing a big ol' fucking line under whether I like it - 'this bump won't go away' did she seriously fucking say that - or not, it probably says far, far more about today's society than most other albums I can think of. In that, it is a success, whether those were intentions or not. Probably, the fact that it wasn't intended to be this way makes what this album says all the more forceful. But no amount of po-mo thinking is persuading me into saying I 'like' this. Then again, I don't 'like' Whitehouse either, and this is fairly similar; listening to this, I feel truly fucking awful. On a William Bennett level. Farrah Abrahams, I salute you. But it's not because it is entirely horrible that it gravitates onto this new plane of horrendousness. No, it's because it IS listenable every so often, in tiny snatches: that's what makes it so awful. It's not totally awful. Fuck, the ending of 'Searching for Closure' seems to imply she's fucking killed her lover. Jesus. Is this an elaborate murder confession? Oh no. Oh no.

Admittedly I am quite tired but anything that produces this kind of a reaction from me was some value? I think. I think it does. Fuck. I'm tired. This is a bad review, but on the other hand i dont think its as bad as the tinymixtapes review holy fuck

FUCK TRACK 9 IS FUCKING TERRIFYING FUCK OH NO FUCK NO MAKE IT STOP

... and track 10, did that begin with the lyric 'I step out of my own grave'? Farrah Fawcett has killed someone. farrah fawcett has killed someone. maybe herself.

i only had 2 hours of sleep last night. and i have been awake for 19 hours now. this is just word vomit. its not a review.

i dont like it. i hate it. it is fucking terrifying. for that reason it is above average.

here is what i think:

+10 - track 9 is fucking visceral
-5 - my mind really fucking hurts
+5 - my mind really fucking hurts
-5 - my mind really really fucking hurts
+1 - fuck.

6/10

next album

jesus fucking chriiist