So I was working in the basement on some stuff, with the mp3 player on random. I went upstairs for a minute, and as I was walking back down, I heard a weird song coming from the basement. I thought, shit, that sounds a lot like the Beatles but how is there a Beatles song I totally have never heard? As I got closer, I recognized the tune, but it wasn’t the Beatles. It was “Sub Rosa Subway” by Klaatu…
Read the story here. They got a little screwed in my opinion, but it’s not like a Badfinger story or anything. It’s more about how everyone loves a conspiracy.
Mixwit is a newish service that lets you grab tunes from all over the web using both the Seeqpod and Skreemer search engines, then put them together in a mixtape. It’s a lot like Muxtape, except you’re not uploading anything (so they’re probably farther away from a Cease & Desist), and it comes in the form of an embeddable Flash movie shaped like a cassette tape. Pretty cool. Here’s something I made with some old ska and reggae, and I’ll probably be using this service to flesh out some articles in the future.
It’s getting hard to keep track of Boris, really. I mean what the hell, they put out an album every month, usually as a collaboration with someone else (most notably SunnO))) and Merzbow). I believe the last thing I heard was Walrus and Groon, though I think the last “proper” Boris full-length would have to be 2005’s Pink. I loved Pink, especially the mopey Justin-Broadrick-like opener “Farewell.” The rest of the album was fairly straightforward 70s-worshipping heavy Boris-ism. If you can call anything they’ve done straightforward or typical.
Smile often still channels the 70s as only Boris can, but don’t call it “straightforward.”
Opener “Message” is a red herring, just like “Farewell,” though not quite to the same degree. It throbs and pulses with a big-ass electronic beat, and plays like a twisted-up heavy metal disco hybrid or (pardon this, trust me it’s good) Boris’s version of LCD Soundsystem.
“Next Saturn” is, for me, the centerpiece of the album, epic and heavy. It breaks down into a vintage-metal mess just when you least expect it, only to come back to moody melodicism and back again full circle.
But the rest of the album, aside from the driving hard psych Boris-jam “Dead Destination,” sounds to me like the culmination of what Boris has been doing over the course of the past few years. Sprawling areas of feedback drones, layers of hissing and slashing noise over top of their hard psych, and — maybe most importantly — liberal doses of spaced-out melody meshed with slow and heavy doom riffing a la “Farewell” combine to make what might be the quintessential Boris album. At least for the moment.
If you’re out there in RSS land, take a jaunt back to the site for a minute to gander at the new look. Some of your favorite stars of the stage randomly grace the header now. But we’re still here, and we’re still pink.
Also, there’s support for Gravatars in the comments now, so go get yours!
