Writing

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

THE STROKES

April 19th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Most people who know me know that I’m a tragic for The Strokes, one of the bands that shaped my head-first dive into ‘alt’ music. And so it was with nervous energy that I approached reviewing their new album for my buds at FasterLouder (or FatterLosers as I sometimes call it). It was a difficult task and I was pretty over the review by the time I finished it, but the comments that came through convinced me that my critique of Angles was, thankfully, un-shit. Read on!

The Strokes – Taken For A Fool (Live On Letterman)

New albums from The Strokes don’t happen every day. Indeed, it’s been some five years in between drinks for the New York City poster boys with new album Angles following on from their third disc, the tricky First Impressions Of Earth, in January 2006. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Angles has attained near-mythic status before its release, with expectations set to ‘second coming’ levels.

That was probably unavoidable considering that this is The Strokes after all – one of the galvanising forces behind the indie-rock revival of the early ‘00s – and also that a fourth LP from the band seemed poised to become a Detox or Chinese Democracy white whale of sorts as each member of the band (bar guitarist Nick Valensi ) embarked on solo endeavours in that five year stretch.

Whatever you thought of those solo outings – who could forget Nickel Eye? – once you’ve cycled through all of the 10 tracks on Angles you’ll recognise that the raft of side projects was ultimately beneficial for The Strokes’ development. No longer can The Strokes be painted as Julian Casablancas and co. with all the band members flexing their creative muscles and providing more input than ever before to shape the material on Angles.

There’s definitely a broader palette available to The Strokes on Angles and the band pick and choose when to dip into it casually like with the tropical embellishments of the otherwise vintage garage rock Machu Pichu or go all out revisionist with something like Call Me Back and its sparse, drowsy guitar plucks and xylo tinkles.

The balance which The Strokes strike between those two impulses is particularly impressive on Angles, with the band imbuing the familiar with fresh twists like Taken For A Fool which bolsters duelling guitars with precision-processed drumming from Fabrizio Moretti and Under Cover Of Darkness which bounces to new heights with some rare backing vocals from the band. Elsewhere something like Games stands out for its utter alien-ness with programmed electronic patterns replacing guitars and finale track Life Is Simple In The Moonlight morphs into an intriguing John Hughes style last-dance-at-prom gem with an enveloping chorus and the leftover synth sheen from Casablancas’ Phrazes For The Young LP.

While the beefed up treatment given to First Impressions Of Earth by producer David Kahne was ultimately top-heavy and out of character for The Strokes following their first two very compact albums, Angles never once feels forced. Yes, not all the turns of experimentation are as successful as each other with You’re So Right kind of becoming lost in its own broody angst and the acoustic flourishes that intersperse Games’ electronic waves come across as jarring, but The Strokes seem particularly at ease attempting new things here, happy to twist different knobs and prod their compositions into unexplored territories.

In fact, despite the reportedly difficult recording process there is a relaxed and upbeat attitude present throughout the record, as is apparent on highlight jam Gratisfaction that bursts forward with stadium rock drum thumps and punches of fuzzy guitar before the band nail their soft-rock Boston reference with a chanting all-in chorus made for AM radio frequencies.

As followers of the band are want to do, the merits of Angles will be discussed at length and rigorously compared to The Strokes’ previous releases. It’s not the flawless portrait of a band that Is This It was. It’s not as taut as Room On Fire. It lacks a uniting radio hit like Heart In A Cage from First Impressions Of Earth. Yet, with all its enthusiastic experimentation, Angles is perhaps the most interesting Strokes record to date.

Having well and truly moved beyond the confines of the garage and into a Manhattan loft with walls of new sounds at their disposal, Angles is the perfect summation of their first ten years on the scene and an indication of what is still to come from The Strokes.

Tags: , ,

ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI

April 14th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

While I don’t do as much of it as I’d like to, reviewing albums still remains a steady part of my work as a writer/journalist/dude with a laptop for various sites and papers in Australia. I’ve always meant to be more pro-active and post my reviews here on Hyperbole more often so let’s pretend it’s January 1st and I’m getting started on this year’s resolutions.

Architecture In Helsinki
Moment Bends (Modular/Universal)

It’s been interesting to watch Architecture In Helsinki’s evolution from sprawling hippy-pop collective into the the taut electronic unit that they present on their fourth and latest offering Moment Bends. Yet although the Melbourne group has forsaken most of its former arsenal of jam-room instruments in favour of synthesizers and drum machines, Architecture In Helsinki are no less inventive for it. Indeed, Moment Bends is Architecture In Helsinki revelling in a new sonic playground with the band creating an array of curveball hooks and sounds out of their new electronic toys. First single Contact High mixes Prince-like sex-funk with robot vocal processing and a cosmic guitar solo, Desert Island goes for the kitchen sink approach with calypso electronics, pretend pan-pipes and a euphoric choral finish, while Denial Style is excellent ‘80s cheese-pop with bonkers synths and girl/boy vocals. Even the plaintive closing ballad B4 3D makes sense despite itself. Somehow, whatever twisted pop experiment AIH decide to attempt, they make it work.

With word restrictions I probably didn’t get to talk enough about how much I like Moment Bends – I really really do. It’s full of wonderful little eccentricities as you’d expect from AIH but all done in a straight forward and accessible way. It’s rather sublime pop that a seven year old could like just as easily as a 70 year old could. You should dig it.

http://www.architectureinhelsinki.com/


Architecture In Helsinki – Contact High (Clock Opera Mix)

Tags: , , ,

CATCALL

March 31st, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Things are really starting to blow up for Catcall. As well as her Ivy League single ‘Swimming Pool’ going loco-bananas with all those tasty remixes, the girl was on 90210 recently thanks to her big Hollywood fan, Mr. Broke Mogul himself, Scott Vener. This is all leading into her debut LP due out later this year and to get the skinny on it and what’s ahead I nabbed some time with Catcall not so long ago for an inthemix Q&A sesh. It was pretty good. Here it is getting the Hyperbole treatment.

Catcall – Swimming Pool (The Emergency Remix)

Since the first EP it seems as though you’ve been gradually building up steam to the album release this year. Has that felt like a long process or something that you’ve kind of relished being a part of every step of the way? Or neither?

It has felt like a long process which I think is quite standard for an artist releasing their first album. It has been very necessary to let the process happen organically and to let myself grow naturally so I could reach the standard of songwriting that I aspire to. I’ve had to spend a long time demoing, then working/re-working demos, then graduating them to fully formed songs, and so many ideas get binned in that process that you have to write new material. I have really enjoyed this process because I’ve gained a lot of confidence in myself, learnt a lot and increased my ability. The EP is quite naïve and driven by a blind enthusiasm and I had no real idea of where I could go with this and what my capabilities were until I started working on the new demos. I also didn’t realize how much I had to improve on my songwriting and my vocal ability and how much I needed to mature. It’s taken a lot of failing and patience, but it’s all been worth it.

We’ve already heard Swimming Pool off the LP, is that tune an indication of sorts of what we can expect from the full thing?

I think so, I mean nothing is going to sound exactly like Swimming Pool, and nothing else will be that slow on the record, but I think in terms of vibe that track is an indication of what will inhabit the record.

What was it like to get Julian Mendelsohn involved with the release of Swimming Pool? Dude’s a legit legend and everything.

It’s pretty cool, and he did such an amazing edit. I don’t think I really knew what to expect with the remix and when he came back with it, I was pretty blown away. It feels so filmic too; my friend and I are going to make a film to it that we’ll release on the internet in a couple of months.

One thing which I really like about your stuff is that you don’t seem afraid to experiment a little and open your work up to others like GLOVES on Swimming Pool and I know Youth said he’s been doing a few tracks for you. How did you go about forming relationships with other producers and getting them involved with the LP?

Yama I’ve known via his work with Snap Crakk and Damn Arms (they played shows with my first band Kiosk way back when), and I had heard some of the later Damn Arms stuff and GLOVES stuff, really dug it and approached him to work on a track. He sent me some beds over email and I demoed some ideas then we worked on the track a bit more together in his studio. The collaboration with Luke (Youth) was hooked up through a friend and we actually demoed 4 or 5 tracks over email before I even got the chance to meet him in person. Most of the people I’ve worked with on the record are friends or friends/collaborators of friends and I’ll usually just contact them, get them to send me something and see if magic happens. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

I always wonder how those relationships with producers work, like, who brings what to the table?

It always begins with the producer sending me a bed …it could be very simple, a beat, some bass, a synth line…and then I work at home on my computer writing vocal melodies and lyrics. I’m primarily a top line songwriter so I need a beat and some semblance of a melody as a spring board to write. I almost always work alone when I’m writing initial ideas for a track and we usually go back and forth over email, sometimes we’ll get together and work on it in their studio and sometimes we won’t, it depends on the logistics. Then I’ve been taking these demos and doing the final vocal performance/recording with a producer called Bry Jones. From there we seek out cohesion in terms of production so every track on the record can sit well together.

Were you able to work with everyone you wanted to on the LP? Is there a wishlist of potential collaborators?

I’ve mainly just worked with who I had access to and I’ve tried to work with as many local artists I can whose work I dig because you never know what magic can happen. I think at this stage its great working with local bedroom producers because they’re hungry like me to get tracks out there and create great work, plus we’re all at the same level so there’s no ego or bullshit. There’s so much amazing talent in Australia, especially in electronic music and I’ve been really psyched with everyone who’s been involved. I’m keen to work with anyone who has a good vibe and gets where I’m coming from, and I really like seeing what falls in my lap.

Still on that, is it ever difficult to assert your own personality when you’re making music with a number of different people? Is there ever a case of too many cooks…?

Because I’m the human element of the track my personality is going to be part of it, so it’s never really difficult to assert. Usually when I’m working with a collaborator and they’re making tracks specifically for my album, we’re both working towards my vision, but when I’m working for someone else’s record I’m usually working to their vision.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

THE SOUND OF DUBSTEP REVIEW

January 15th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Writing

Various Artists
The Sound Of Dubstep mixed by Borgore & Will Styles (Ministry Of Sound)

Characterised by clattering, half-time beats and wobbly bass breakdowns, dubstep has been blowing up in clubs across the world and encroaching on radios recently, building the belief that it and its offshoot sub-genres (post-dubstep and the maligned brostep) are the future of dance music. And Ministry Of Sound seemingly believes this too, hedging their house and electro empire with their first dubstep compilation, The Sound Of Dubstep.

As trend-jumping as the move is, The Sound Of Dubstep is at least better than rival Onelove’s Dubstep Invasion collection from 2010, offering a more current portrait of the scene. And it has clout too with Will Styles and international bass-blaster Borgore mixing the two discs. But if the proviso for Borgore’s appearance was that he could cram in his own productions then it’s licensing dollars poorly spent as 11 Borgore tracks on a disc of 28 does not a well-rounded affair make. But with Skrillex, Skream, Datsik, Doorly and more ridiculously named producers on board, newly converted dubstep fans could do much worse than this.

Tags: , , ,

SNOOP DOGG

January 15th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Writing

Snoop Dogg
Doggumentary (EMI)

With Snoop Dogg’s 2009 LP Malice n Wonderland bearing the unfortunate mark of being his lowest charting release thus far, the LA rap mogul has been in damage control mode, jumping on the campaign trail and quickly assembling his next move in Doggumentary. A part of Snoop’s hopes for a blazing commercial comeback relies on the rapper hooking up with any and every artist in his rolodex, with features from David Guetta, Wiz Khalifa, Kanye West and Gorillaz locked down for mass appeal.

Thankfully for us and for Snoop it works. There’s nothing like the threat of irrelevance to motivate a rap star and Snoop is at the top of his game for the most part of Doggymentary, peddling his pimp-swag and getting the best out of his guests such as on the Scott Storch produced Boom with T-Pain. Snoop’s ambitions occasionally get the best of him like on the country joint Superman with Willie Nelson and Wet, the club abortion with Guetta but it’s good to hear him wake up from sleep-walking through his career recently.

Tags: , ,

CHROMEO FEATURE

December 31st, 2010 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Out in Australia right now for a slew of festivals over our summer, Chromeo are peddling tunes off their rather fantastic new album ‘Business Casual’. I spoke to Dave1 a few months ago now just as the record was getting ready to bow and have seriously been sitting on the chat ever since. Here’s a copy of the interview published on inthemix. It’s best to imagine Dave1 chatting in a laidback-but-literate twang and me with a goofy Australian drawl. And go…

Hey Dave, what’re you up to?

“We’re just wrapping up a photo-shoot actually. We’ve been here for most of the day.”

Yeah, right. You don’t ever really think about that side of music, the days where you’re not in the studio and you’re not on the road, you’re doing all sorts of external stuff. And with you guys it seems like you put a lot of thought into those other things that you do, it’s controlled.

“Yeah, it is definitely that way. But the trick is not to make it look like there’s a lot of effort and energy going into it. You know, we’re this fun band that makes bubbly, light and playful music and people think that we do all of that without thinking about it all too much.”

I remember reading that as well as Chromeo you personally earned a crust teaching French at a university. Did there come a point where you could step back and focus on the band full time and not have to support yourself with another job?

“I still do teach, actually. Both are sort of a full-time thing for me right now. But yeah, I think with the Fancy Footwork album Chromeo became something that I had to take a little more seriously. You know, I had to think more about touring and making something of a livelihood out of it. I mean, we’ve always taken it seriously, but you can never control or anticipate how something is going to evolve. We just try to make the best of it and show how grateful we are for the opportunities we’ve been given. That’s really it. I know it sounds cheesy and I might sound like a gospel-kinda dude but it really is what we want to do and we want people to know that we’re grateful for being able to do it.”

I was interested to hear from you in another interview that now when you look back at the reaction to She’s In Control you kind’ve understand why people weren’t sure what to make of Chromeo. Why is that and how has that changed since the first album?

“I think people can see that we’ve been so consistent for so long now and they get that it’s really not a joke for us. People will think ‘okay, wow, those guys are really serious about this! They really care about Jheri curl, ‘80s inspired electro funk and they are so real about Hall & Oates that they actually play with Hall & Oates!’. And trends come and go, you know? When we started the band everybody else was doing electroclash; where are they now? Same thing with disco-punk; where are they now? We’re still here, you know?”

Absolutely, I get you. If a band was citing Hall & Oates in 2002 they would’ve been laughed at. Now there’s a lot of love for that sound. It’s caught up to you.

“Yeah, we were saying how much we loved guys like Hall & Oates and Phil Collins and interviewers were hanging up the phone because they thought we were just a joke. When I say that our new record sounds like Kenny Loggins and they hang up the phone again, just know that in five years everybody will be listening to Kenny Loggins.”

As well as the ‘80s electro that you mention, you guys have a big thing for classic rock and you always throw in a little Journey or Boston at your live shows. Where does that side of Chromeo fit into the music?

“We really love old rock songs like that. You know our song Night By Night? That’s all guitars, I love that track. What a lot of people don’t get is that the big musicians of the ‘80s, they were influenced by music of the ‘70s. Like, if you think about what Quincy and Michael were listening to when they made Thriller, the records that were setting the bar back then would’ve been Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and The Eagles. So sometimes we’re so ‘80s that we’re deep into those ‘70s records because those records influenced the stuff that we’re influenced by. That’s our rationale.”

Kenny Loggins was a smooth little pimp in the ‘70s and then in the ‘80s he was like a pop hits juggernaut.

“Yes! And Hall & Oates, man! Hall & Oates were like a prog band in the ‘70s and then they worked with Todd Rungren and then later with Arthur Baker. We embrace all of that.”

I didn’t know they worked with Arthur Baker, clearly I’m not up to scratch on my Hall & Oates.

“Yeah man, it was Big Bam Boom that they did with Arthur Baker. Go buy that album, it’s ‘80s electro but it’s almost hip-hop. It’s almost Afrika Bambaataa.”

Chromeo – Night By Night (Siriusmo Remix)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

2000-2010: AN AUSTRALIAN MUSIC SHITROSPECTIVE

December 20th, 2010 by Dave Ruby Howe | 4 Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Having spent the last five years writing borderline libelous critiques for various Australian publications – especially BMA in my hometown of Canberra where I do the fortnightly singles column – I’ve found myself surrounded by bad music. Sure there’s good stuff in there too, but it’s almost more fun to observe the shit stuff. Thinking more and more about the abysmal lows of my journalistic endeavours, I decided it was time to do something fun, and wrap it all up together. Here it is, my Shitrospective. As it sounds, this is a collection of the very worst Australian singles (just singles) of the last decade and a year. I hope you enjoy wading through the mud as much as I have again.

Bec Cartwright – All Seat’s Taken

YouTube Preview Image

While Neighbours has given us Kylie and even Nathalie Imbruglia, Channel 7’s rival weekday soap Home And Away gave us…Bec Cartwright? ‘All Seat’s Taken’ sinks faster than if the Titanic was bottomed with lead, with Bec’s voice sounding thinner than a wafer. It’s fitting that after this bomb Bec found her true calling: harvesting Lleyton’s seed.

Alex Lloyd – Amazing

YouTube Preview Image

Words can’t express how much I loved ‘Black The Sun’ back at the turn of the century, Lloydy really went south from there, transforming into a soft, MOR sack of shit and serving as the blueprint for Pete Murray’s whole career. Indeed, ‘Amazing’ is him at his most contrite. As nice as the mesh of production may be, Lloyd sounds more earnest and self-serious than a second year NIDA student.

Eskimo Joe – Foreign Land

YouTube Preview Image

I’m happy to back arguments for an artist’s growth and development, but when it comes to Eskimo Joe’s career progression into humourless waist-coat wearing stadium dudes it’s a bit much to stomach. Really, how is something like the shrill posturing of ‘Foreign Land’ more fun than playing fucking ‘Sweater’? And then there’s Basement Birds…

TV Rock ft. Seany B – Flaunt It

YouTube Preview Image

It’s as if Grant Smillie DJ’d at one too many bogan weddings until he finally had the eureka moment and figured that the world was crying out for a Right Said Fred revival and decided to form TV Rock. To top it all off he picked up the first meathead from Kings Cross who said he could rap in Seany B. You’re not hearing that wrong, he really did say “This track’s designed to make you cream”.

Scott Cain – Hilary Duff

YouTube Preview Image

Reality TV is to blame for much of the trash on the ARIA charts these days but one the worst offending puppy mills from this generation would have to be Popstars, Channel 7’s pre-Idol performer competition which had none of Idol’s staying power and left behind a legacy of Sophie Monk’s veneers, the one who married and divorced Kyle Sandilands and the remarkably unremarkable Scott Cain. Who thought Scott Cain could be a marketable pop entity? His audience pull would’ve been desperate teenage girls and, um, well desperate teenage girls. And they’re too busy shopping at Equip to go to fucking Sanity or whatever retailer was big in 2002.

The dude’s most notable tune was this, ‘Hilary Duff’, an in-theory cheeky ode to the ‘Duffster. But she would’ve been, what, 16 at the time? That’s more than a little creepy, dude.

The Valentinos – Rain

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Too controversial? Eh, maybe. Perhaps the hype wave following their first EP was insurmountable but when The (not quite Lost yet) Valentinos returned to the scene with ‘Rain’, a kinda limp and constrained love-tap compared to uncontrollable energy of ‘Man With A Gun’, it was an epic disappointment. Four something years later and ‘Rain’ still stands out as one of the biggest let-downs of the buzz band era.

Girlband – Partygirl

YouTube Preview Image

Of all the artist reality TV shows produced in Australia recently – the Popstars, the Idols, the X-Factors, the Australia’s Got Talents – the worst of the worst had to be Girlband, the dead-on-arrival Channel 10 show following the assemblage of an all-girl pop group of the same name. This show was horrendous but totally watchable to see record industry folks blindly believe they were creating the next Spice Girls out of four mismatched Aussie wannabes who were better off hosting bingo nights than masquerading as pop stars. Indeed one of them did go onto host a bingo night on Channel 7. Eerie.

The duo’s feted debut came with ‘Partygirl’ which still remains essentially unlistenable to this day. But the plain truth of ‘Partygirl’ is that it’s just really bad. Were Sony BMG’s people doing blow through their ears that they just couldn’t hear that some ridiculous speed garage beats don’t mix well with ‘rawk’ guitars and that seriously cheesy chorus? It’s a puzzlingly dreadful choice for a single and an easy way to put a bullet into four young careers.

The Galvatrons – When We Were Kids

YouTube Preview Image

There’s been no love lost between this blog and The Galvatrons, with myself previously penning some not-so-kind appraisals of the group and their four dedicated fans spamming the comments in fits of Proactiv-fueled rage. But instead of just calling them slapstick dickheads and douchebags I’ll try to be more reasonable with a measured explanation of my disdain for The Galvatrons.

Put simply, this shit is cheese. And not the tasty kind of cheese that you snack on occasionally; it’s the filthy, festering cheese at the back of the fridge that’s been half open for a few months, slowly growing mould and that weird dairy sweat to the point that you’re afraid to touch so you just leave it in there until your girlfriend tells you to chuck it the fuck out. And even if The Galvatrons are deliberately trying to be tasteless and ironic their whole steez is ripped from a genre that barely existed outside of a few Stan Bush songs.

I could’ve picked any of their tunes to illustrate how shitty The Galvatrons are/were but this one’ll do as it’s the only single that really did anything before Warner wised up and gave the A&R dude that signed The ‘Trons a well deserved punch in the scrote. And yeah, it doesn’t help The Galvatrons’ case that they’re also dickhead douchebags.

Rogue Traders – Watching You

YouTube Preview Image

When future generations look back on the wasteland that was the ‘00s local pop scene, Rogue Traders will invariably come up and in between this and that horrible ‘here comes the drums’ one our children’s children will tilt their cyborg heads and wonder “what were they thinking?”. Seriously, the most interesting thing about this is Nat Bass’s choker and emo-sleeve combo in the video.

Nikki Webster – Strawberry Kisses

YouTube Preview Image

Proving that all the bad ideas on this list don’t even scratch the surface of Australia’s dark pop past it’s time to move onto the notorious Nikki Webster. International readers will (hopefully not) remember her from the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, an incident which imbued the star with enough foolish motivation to launch a pop career, climaxing (eugh…) with ‘Strawberry Kisses’, a single destined to be blasted from the cheap speakers of a sex offender’s windowless rape van for all time.

Butterfingers – Yo Mama

YouTube Preview Image

It’d take some genuine cultural treasures like Butterfingers to come with something as aurally ugly as ‘Yo Mama’, which, as advertised, is that same lame joke from high school stretched out into a rap/rock jam designed for pub drunks and snickering 14 year old boys.

Joel Turner & The Modern Day Poets ft. Anthony Mundine – Knock U Out

YouTube Preview Image

Taking a break from the torrent of cynicism here, this isn’t that terrible. Joel and his MDP are serviceable enough as far as proto chart skip-hop goes and belching ‘Eye of the Tiger’ bass is a fun novelty, but what really stinks about ‘Knock U Out’ is of course the preposterous inclusion of boxer/athlete/idiot Anthony Mundine. As intimidating as he would probably be in person, his chripy flow is absurdly un-tough, providing about as much snarling menace to the track as an injured baby lamb.

Silverchair – The Greatest View

YouTube Preview Image

In a particularly misguided display of teenage pop-rebellion I once microwaved a copy of Silverchair’s ‘Diorama’. I was in the throes of ‘rock n roll’ at this point in my life, blindly fapping for anything made in a garage with attitude and I could no longer carry the shame of owning ‘Diorama’ with all its orchestral pop whimsy. So I nuked it. Dumb of course. Since then I’ve come to appreciate its expansive scope but one song that remains sucky to this day is ‘The Greatest View’.

On an album of other-worldly hooks and fully realised Daniel Johns pop-chops, ‘The Greatest View’ is an epic retreat into the overdone and outplayed radio grunge that everybody not on a worksite left behind in the ‘90s.

The Veronicas – Untouched

YouTube Preview Image

Unable to decide whether or not they’re goths, punks, pop stars, faux lesbians, or a PR person’s wet dream/rape-fantasy combination of all four, The Veronica’s hit their shit-peak with ‘Untouched’, a horrid mess of orchestral presets, turbo-sludge riffs, electro bass, and thin throated vocals. I’ll happily stand behind ‘4ever’ as good pop, but this really just makes no sense.

Yolanda Be Cool vs. DCUP – We No Speak Americano 

YouTube Preview Image

Super Mario Bros. The movie. You feel me? Put three good things together: Ninetndo + Bob Hoskins + Dennis Hopper / DCUP + Yolanda Be Cool + sample house. Despite the sum of both their parts the results of each equation are frighteningly shitty. And funnily enough, ‘Americano’ is like the Mario Bros. movie in song from the gratingly annoying premise to the dudes masquerading as Italians. And what the hell is with Bowser’s hair?

Tags: , , , , , , ,

CLIPSE FEATURE

October 15th, 2010 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

When I track down Terrence Thornton for our interview about his upcoming Australian visit, Thornton’s chilling at his home in Virginia and watching some TV before tackling a grand-scale remodeling of his wardrobe. Sounds like a pretty casual Thursday night, yeah? Well sure, but of course Thornton is one half of prodigal US rap duo Clipse, known by his infinitely doper moniker Pusha T, and it’s not like he’s catching up on the news or anything, Pusha is actually watching back the broadcast of the recent MTV VMAs where the rapper closed the event with friend and now label boss Kanye West with the much buzzed about Runaway from West’s upcoming My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy LP.

“That was an amazing night, man,” Pusha says stopping the playback for our interview. Surrounded by krumping ballet dancers, West and Pusha stole the show with their performance of Runaway which saw West centre stage working a sample pad while the Clipse MC darted across stage with the adrenalin-spurred speed of a boxer throwing haymakers. “I wasn’t nervous at all before we did it, I just wanted to get out there and do our thing. It was great and it everyone can’t stop talking about it.”


Kanye West – Runaway ft. Pusha T

Assured of the performance’s success – and indeed correct about the impact of the song’s live premiere with blogs and media pundits signaling West’s official comeback after a year in the wilderness – Pusha seems much more concerned about his look on the night, praising the bold salmon coloured suit he donned for his verse. “Salmon, man, it’s not every day you see a dude in a salmon suit, right? But yeah, it looks good, I know it looks good. I’m all about throwing in a bit of colour that people ain’t expecting. I was being styled by the editor of Italian Vogue that night, so I just went with it and really felt it.”

As with any competitor in the modern rap game, Pusha speaks with overflowing swagger and unflinching braggadocio turning to his clothing line with Clipse partner and brother Malice (that’s Gene Thornton) called Play Cloths and delivering a hype-y little spiel about their latest collection.

“I just got all of the new Play Cloths in tonight, they’re looking so good man. I think this is the best we’ve done yet with Play Cloths, it looks awesome dude,” he says. “Tonight I’m gonna be going through my closet and trying to make room for all these new threads. That’s going to be tough ‘cause the way I’ve got my wardrobe now, I just love it, I paid a lot of cash to get it that way but you gotta lose some old shit to make room for the new stuff, right?”

Speaking proudly about Clipse’s success with Play Cloths, Pusha refers to it as just a part of the Clipse empire and it’s this idea of an empire, of a franchise, an identity that begins to pop up more and more as we chat with the discussion moving to Pusha’s work with Kanye West and his upcoming solo album on West’s G.O.O.D. Music label.

“I just think it’s time to do it,” the rapper says of the decision to work on a solo album next and not the next Clipse record. “It’s about giving the fans what they want, meeting the demand that’s out there and showing this other part of myself to them. We gotta build the brand a bit and keep offering new stuff. It’s still early, I don’t even have a name for it but I’m loving the records that we’ve got so far for it.”

According to the Virginia rapper, the partnership with West and his G.O.O.D. imprint spun out of Pusha’s involvement in Dark Twisted Fantasy, West’s comeback album recorded in Hawaii that’s due out this November.

“It was actually Rick Ross who got me into the record,” Pusha says. “I got this call from Rick Ross and he’s like ‘what’re you doing right now? You need to be here in Hawaii because this thing that’s happening right now is huge’. So then I get a call from Kanye and he told me that he’s a really big fan of mine and that he respects the way I approach rapping and he asks me how soon I can get to Hawaii. I was in LA and then going to New York and he was going to be in New York too, so we ended up meeting in New York and flying back to Hawaii. I planned to spend like a week there but I stayed for a month in the end because we were just having such a good time in the studio working on these records, man,” Pusha enthuses. “Working with someone like ‘Ye is great because when you’re in the studio with him working on a track it’s like having a conversation with him. He’s great like that so we vibed real well. We did stuff for his album and we made stuff for my record. It’s going to be big, man.”

When pressed for details about which other beatmakers would be lending their services to his solo debut, Pusha remains cagey not wanting to give away too much, but he does offer a few interesting bits of gossip saying that there’ll definitely be some new Neptunes tracks on there and that he’s also heading into the studio with visionary hitmaker Bangladesh “sometime in October”.

Kanye West – Christian Dior Denim Flow ft. Kid Cudi, Pusha T, John Legend, Lloyd Banks & Ryan Leslie

Tags: , , , , ,

SINGLES COLUMN

September 19th, 2010 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Beyond the blogging realm I try to write as much as I can for magazines and other pubs and Canberra’s BMA was actually the first place to ever give me a go so I still do their fortnightly singles column five years later. It’s the only outlet that I do pro-bono anymore but that let me say shit and dick a lot in print so it’s totes worth it. Here’s last week’s run of singles.

Cee-Lo Green
Fuck You (Warner)

YouTube Preview Image

If there’s anyone I’d love to hear more of on commercial radio it’s Cee Lo Green. Dude has an incredible voice and charisma oozing out his pores and Fuck You marks his big leap to the spotlight. But, and there is a but, as jaunty and infectious as this is, it’s also pretty harmless. Enjoy this now before 70 year olds start calling it ‘funky’ and grooving to it like Hey Ya 2010.

Kylie
Get Outta My Way (Warner)

YouTube Preview Image

Why isn’t Kylie bigger than Madonna? Madonna releases drivel these days, yet Kylie manages to strangely stay ahead of the pack by aligning herself with great producers and writers. As such Get Outta My Way is a compact little gem of pop, bouncy and instantly catchy. And there’re no zombie arms in sight.

Linkin Park
The Catalyst (Warner)

YouTube Preview Image

Knowing their target audience of pent up white dudes ever so well, Linkin Park throw all their tricks into the mix like they’re going out of business. That of course means more yelling, more emo angst, more white-guy rapping and more wannabe NIN electronics than ever before. Michael Bay will fucking love this shit.

Muscles
Girl Crazy Go (Modular/UMA)

YouTube Preview Image

Say what we will about Muscles – and I’ve said a libelous amount myself – I’m actually really glad this troublemaker is back. The time off has only made him stranger and so now he’s on some kind of futuristic Hi-NRG electro tip. The vocals are grating but as a whole this actually a lot of fun. Sure the initial fascination in him has waned like a kid with a stray dog before they get tired of it shitting on the carpet, but Muscles was never meant to be a well loved pinup, he’s better when he’s the oddball outsider. Welcome back, you wonderful lunatic.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

CHROMEO

September 17th, 2010 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

So much love for Chromeo, no question about that. In an age where buzz bands and producers spring up for three weeks only to be never heard from again these two funkers are just so damn consistent and their new LP Business Casual is already a 2010 favourite. Here’s my review of the record as published on inthemix.com.au.

Chromeo – Don’t Turn The Lights On (Christian Martin Remix)

Lenny Kravitz – Breath (Chromeo Remix)

Chromeo have always skated a thin line with followers of their immaculate retro-electro. Are the talk-box vocals and synth-ed up sounds a joke? Do they really love Hall & Oates as much as they say they do? How seriously can you take them? While such questions were legitimate ones following the release of their first record, She’s In Control, when the Canadian duo dropped their follow up disc Fancy Footwork in 2007 any doubts of the band’s resolve were squashed. That was an album packed with hit after hit, and most importantly, it was great to listen to, every song tweaked and twisted to perfection. With Fancy Footwork, we finally found out the truth about Chromeo; they’re serious about being fun, and as such, they’re seriously fun. Now the Canadian funksters have arrived at album number three and it’s all sorts of awesome.

Kicking off Business Casual with Hot Mess, Chromeo waste no time in re-familiarising listeners with what the duo do best, wheeling out the thick analog synths and bouncing rhythms for a skinny-tie-sporting ‘80s romp. It’s a perfect opener to the record, showing that Chromeo haven’t missed a beat in between drinks. Things then slink on and into I’m Not Contagious, another slice of unabashed retro-goodness with hooks for days.

If there was a worry that perhaps Chromeo would get a little stagnant mining the one style for so long – but doing it ever so well I’ll add – then Business Casual’s lead singles offer some impressive flashes of diversity for the pair of Dave 1 and P-Thugg with Night By Night offering up some of the guitar heroics of the band’s live show and Don’t Turn The Lights On turning down the BPMs for a strutty sex jam. Elsewhere You Make It Rough bursts forth into an extended seven-minute synth-epic.

These newish colours suit the Chromeo boys, especially when they get around to the smoothed out J’ai Claqué La Porte which as well as being the band’s first song completely in French also features Chromeo picking up strings and acoustic guitars for a wonderfully lush two minutes.

But as with every dose of Chromeo material, the duo never push too far behind doing what they love and Business Casual is naturally plumped out with some cracking gems like When The Night Falls and the giddy soft-pop of The Right Type.

It’s all over too quickly in just 10 tunes, but if Business Casual proves one thing it’s that Chromeo are incredibly consistent so it’s likely that I’ll be back here in another three years listening to their next album with a huge grin on my face.

Tags: , , , , ,

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »