jazz: noun. music originating in new orleans around the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently developing through various increasingly complex styles, generally marked by intricate, propulsive rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, improvisatory, virtuosic solos, melodic freedom, and a harmonic idiom ranging from simple diatonicism through chromaticism to atonality.
kindof nearly (but totally almost) what’s going on here with mini pops junior. not related to the creepy channel four kids show of ‘shop-window full of junior jailbait’ infamy. or the old keio vintage drum machine (though they may use one in amongst the saxophone, flute, e-piano, electroharmonix superlooper, lapsteel, geetar and voice produced glitchy jazz). nope. it’s two fellas from berlin improvising and overdubbing till their smoke-stained german hearts are content. imagine a futuro-james ellroy. this is the kindof snakish noir jazz that’d soundtrack the fucker. how do they do it? overdubbing a series of bohren and der club of gore-esque improvs atop atop atop one another. sounds like some elseworld version of bernard herrmann at times, where they’ve dug up his corpse, attached him to some turntables playing the taxi driver score and fed electricity through it. it’s all very scratchy and late-night creepy. a real feeling of abandonment, of the horror of urban sprawl. all very 3am berlin, barely warmed with jagermeister and the skeletal rattle of the u-bahn acting as post-club metronome to ringing ears as you traipse through empty snow streets with only graffiti to semiotically, metaphysically and fearfully guide you. with sampled sneezing. y’know. hands down the best shit i’ve listened to this weekend. zum flughafen bitte!
canto: noun. the highest part in a piece of choral music, a division in an epic poem. fitting given the lofty ambition on display here (and has been on display for about seven years now). it’s big, it’s clever and it’s swedish. total bad-ass ambient blissing with a kindof seventies prog-drone done on shiny computer vibe. this is the third installment in their canto series and it’s totally easing me out of the weekends food, booze and smokes excesses with all manner of warming treated string, keys, samples, drums. i have the big headphones on and this aural hum, plink and voomery is sending me off to my happyhappy blanket place. it’s like valium for my ears. in a good way. it’s medicine in the same way that jagermeister is. it’s such a goddam huge soundscape that it’s making me feel all kinds of tiny and insignificant. which is how i like to feel sundays. i’d say more but christ i’m numb and smiley and ready for bed. beautiful.
comes with the following disclaimer: it probably won’t impare the experience if you’re talking to machine-elves on dmt or something else transcendental. red wine perhaps?
osteoferocious: adjective. used to describe an older lady who is sexually aggressive. not sure if kathleen hanna would approve, you misogynist bastards. just as well yr chucking out little spiky barbs of wondrous noise pop shrapnel then. otherwise i’d be sporting my furrowed brow of righteous indignation on behalf of my sexually castigated sisters (not actual sisters). fitting that this kindof shit was fashionable for all of two minutes (by the time you’d typed i like wavvves, nobody liked them) and frankly i’m glad. means i don’t have to field conversations with hipster doofuses about how fabulously frisky the new no age record is while being stared at blankly when i mention bob pollard. where was i? yeah fitting. fitting coz that’s about how long a record by this kindof thing usually lasts. so back to the story. osteoferocious. two fellas from indiana. one plays drums and sings. one plays geetar and sings. that’s about it, reduced. it’s a whole big blurry squall of melody and energy and big fucking life-loving hollers of pretty racket. sonically not much resemblence to them, but i dig the same vibes here as i got off be your own pet. they describe it as woah-fi. for once i like that shit. gonna use it all the time till it takes off like hypnagogic pop or chillfuckingwave. anyway click on the links below for lovely little nuggets of musical joy.
