Shameful Otaku Secret!

Put some tunes on

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.

There are a lot of bands, artists, and genres out there that the average person wouldn’t be caught dead listening to (for me it’s Italodisco, but to each his own). For even the most ardent supporter of acts like Throbbing Gristle or even Merzbow, no wave might be such a genre. Even the name itself, positioned as a direct affront to new wave, is a hint at the confrontational nature of the music at hand.

Origin

Manhattan is a happening place, no doubt about it. More than a few artistic (and anti-establishment) movements had their start there, including Fluxus and punk rock, the two obvious touchstones for no wave’s beginnings. While the original wave of punk bands didn’t have a very unified sound, most made enough concessions to commerciality to make it onto major labels and the coke habits that came along with that (the Heartbreakers, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads). But a few stood out more than others. Suicide was one such band. It’s hard to front on Suicide – obvious rock and roll influences like Eddie Cochran, Gene Pitney, and leather jackets in a deathmatch against droning organs and synths, all put together in a package built for confrontation. It was the rockist version of Throbbing Gristle, and while perhaps not as inspirational to as wide a range of people, definitely ranking high in cool points.More bands were inspired to use keyboards thanks to them, even as punk made its way to England and California, bringing with it a new traditionalist stance that seemed to thoroughly oppose the use of instrumentation other than 3 guitar chords. Gradually, the nihilistic stance and anti-establishment creativity of punk began to attract avant-gardists as much as teenagers and junkies; more keyboards, saxophones, and atonal experimentation began to creep into the downtown scene. The scene came to a head with Brian Eno’s compilation No New York, which featured some of the key bands. Today’s mix tape is something like an extension of that. Read on: (more…)

As winter approaches, faster for some of us than others, I’ve compiled a list (in no actual order) of companion records for that long ride through the snowy canyons of Seasonal Affectation Disorder or whatever they call it where you get depressed because the world is depressing. In Michigan, the world is depressing for 9 months out of the year so I went with a whole ten albums.

1. Joy Division: Closer
This was an easy one. You saw it coming. No matter how goth or emo you think you are, you’ll never beat Ian Curtis for tragedy. The guy was epileptic, had recently been through a messy divorce, and reportedly just watched Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck, there was nowhere to go but dead. Fortunately for less ruffly goths, mopey indie rockers, and of course Interpol, he left a suicide note first. Closer follows the same pattern as Unknown Pleasures but more so, starting out with some atmospheric but rocking tracks and slowly degenerating into a soul-sucking mire of jaw-dropping, floor-staring demotivation.

2. The Bee Gees: Trafalgar
I’ve reviewed this one before, so I won’t go too into detail; suffice to say that in a career of depressing music, this takes the bitter-ass cake. When the moment of humor comes in a quote like “When you left, I fell to pieces, but now I feel as good as if I were dead,” you know you’re in it for the long dark haul. The uniformly slow tempos probably do more for the sense of unrelenting despair than anything, but the pained lyrics and cracking voice of Robin Gibb may send you over the edge. No wonder they went disco soon after.

3. Xiu Xiu: Fabulous Muscles
Xiu Xiu’s career is also rife with torture, but Jamie Stewart’s Pimple of Pain nonetheless has a definite head. It doesn’t help that it’s their most accessible album, so you might get sucked in. If Stewart yelling the titular “OH!” of “I Luv the Valley OH!” doesn’t get you like it did so many others, perhaps you just need a shot of “Niece’s Pieces.” It was actually written for Stewart’s sister’s new baby, and lovingly tells her the family’s history of drinking, violence, and molestation. The unrelenting intensity of this shockingly cruel piece of work is amazing. If this album doesn’t put a smile on your face, well… there’s probably nothing wrong with you.

4. Pink Floyd: Animals
Certain albums are not angry, depressing, or sad, they just kill all your faith in humanity. Sometimes that’s intentional. Sometimes it’s the sheer oppressive negativity of the writers. In the case of Roger Waters‘ pre-Wall concept record, it’s a mix. Sure, his goal is to kill the happy forever, but he succeeds just a bit too much, thanks to his unenviable and straight-up tiring world view. Plenty of people think The Wall or The Final Cut are the heights of Waters’ narcissistic lean toward cynicism, but I think they were refined a bit from Animals, which is four songs and twelve lifetimes long.

5. The Carpenters: The Singles 1969-1973
To be fair, not everything the Carpenters did was depressing, which is the main reason for picking a greatest hits. It’s really their career and the life of Karen Carpenter that are truly a downer. The OGs of Goth give us a few great nuggets, but the irony of “We’ve Only Just Begun” makes it more depressing in the context of this optimistic early collection than it could ever be on the gas company’s hold music (and it’s always there, every time I’ve ever called the gas company). And don’t get me started on the glorification of groupie pathos that is “Superstar.”

6. SWANS: Cop.
You could probably pick any early-period, middle-period, or hell, late-period SWANS record for this, as well as numerous metallic followers of the No Wave giants (Grief, Sunn O))), Godflesh, who knows), but something about 1984’s Cop, the greatest and most violent achievement of the early days, just pummels your will to live. The lyrics are all in caps, both printed and in delivery, the tempos are all crawling, and the atonal brain-bashing is enough to make the weaker among you break your turntable’s arm after one song. Just remember: Nobody beats their heads in like a cop. Nobody burns their bodies like a cop. Let’s move on to something cheerier.

7. Crass: Yes Sir, I Will.
Crass hated to be called negative. It’s true that they had a great sense of humor, but by this (their last) album, their self-imposed 1984 breakup was not only imminent but pretty much necessary. One song on each side, constantly morphing from formless screaming and noise guitar to droning synths to melancholy piano and back (always) to the screaming. To their credit, Crass much later finally released 10 Notes on a Summer’s Day, which was recorded after this but is much more positive and hopeful.

8. Converge: Jane Doe
Jake Bannon is occasionally interviewed between Converge albums, and he often asserts that he’s found the right combination of prescriptions, powders, and pills to make him happy enough to put out a real grin-fest next time around; still, time after time we’re faced with the same haunting record cover paintings, the same bone-breaking riffs, and the same wall of oppressive darkness. We’ll let him try again next time — again. I was going to put some sample lyrics up, but reading the lyric sheet set me back three hours in writing this post when I went catatonic.

9. The Cure: Faith
The cover says it all: gray. Apparently that’s true for cats in the song “All Cats as Grey” as well, and that’s a pretty cheery song for this bunch. The Cure were doing some pretty dark and gloomy stuff around this time, as were plenty of people. At least SWANS could be counted on to throw a healthy amount of violence and cop-hating into the mix, but this is one monochromatic slab of slack-jawed depression. Like the Bee Gees’ move to disco, Robert Smith and Co. can hardly be blamed for their subsequent hit records like the jaunty “Lovecats.”

10. Coil: Scatology
Coil were known for being pretty dark in the early days, but as all their friends started dying from AIDS, their debut full-length delivered the kind of fun that “destroying angels” just couldn’t do for anyone. From the butt on the cover to the pics of our boys playing in shit on the inside, you think you’re in for a blast, but wait up there buddy. It starts out with the death-and-rebirth dance number “Panic,” which is nearly inspirational in a weird way, but declines slowly until ending with their version of “Tainted Love.” John Balance and Sleazy Christopherson were tight with Marc Almond, so Coil and Soft Cell thought it’d be “fun” to cover the same song at around the same time. But the timing was the only thing remotely similar. Where Soft Cell made it a new wave dance hit, Coil crushed dreams with their beyond-slow ode to AIDS-related-death. Cheery. Bonus points for the video, which features John Balance at a long table of food which rots in stop-motion, and now plays in MoMA though it was initially banned from MTV.

There you go. Stack all those records up, invite your friends over for a party, and laugh as their banter turns into bawling, their carousing into crying. Or load them all up one after the other on your iPod and go jogging in the rain. At night. After getting dumped.

I’m only giving you the means, the rest is up to you. The possibilities are endless.