From their 1991 self-titled release. Sandy Duncan’s Eye is a pretty obscure postpunk/posthardcore/noiserock band from LA, I had their album in the 90s and listened to it a bit, they didn’t stand out that much but in retrospect their stuff is pretty good. This is one of their best songs which is pretty great, alot of their music is kind of like Big Black, Shellac, Drive Like Jehu, Unwound, etc.
Wow, check it out, in this Drive Like Jehu show from 1992 at the X-Ray Cafe in Portland, Oregon, starting at 30:00, there’s a TOTALLY UNRELEASED DRIVE LIKE JEHU SONG that I had never heard before and is not on any album, 7″, compilation, or any other live video I’ve ever seen.
Does anyone know the guys in this band, are there any other rare gems out there? Totally awesome. The only other unreleased piece of Jehu I’ve ever heard is the original? or an alternate intro for New Math–you know how it’s called “New Intro” on Yank Crime? If you listen to the recording of the live Drive Like Jehu KXLU radio set, the intro to New Math is totally different than on Yank Crime and is totally awesome too…
Featuring Mark C from Live Skull, Stuart Argabright from Ike Yard, and Kent Heine from The Holy Ghost, o13 (formerly Outpost 13) has made the record of the year, actually of the past few years, with their new release Time Wave Zero. It’s a sophisticated mix of new wave, no wave, krautrock, dub, electronic, and ambient music that sounds wholly original and inspired, invoking the present, past, and future (bridging the gaps from 1978 to 1985 to 2013 and beyond) in a totally unique way.
I’m tempted to say that only veteran experimental/underground musicians who never hit the big time and have been keeping the torch alive, making art and music in the background for the last few decades, could make a record that sounds as effortless and evocative as Time Wave Zero. If pressed for comparisons I’d say this would fit in nicely with some Can, Philip Glass, Live Skull, Orb’s Orbus Terrarum, Suicide, Joy Division, Brian Eno, all in their prime!!! It’s super-accomplished and stylized, the type of album that all fits together perfectly, evoking a number of moods and emotions that you just can’t get anywhere else. It’s about time–an album this good and consistent hasn’t come out in many years, especially out of the indie/postpunk arena–maybe the last records this interesting were Battles’ Gloss Drop and Mirrored?
Newsflash: Desire Records is also re-releasing some Live Skull records on CD and vinyl, and they’re on Spotify too! It’s about time, Live Skull is basically as good or usually better than Sonic Youth in their own inspired and unique way (only Sister and Daydream Nation are on par with the best Live Skull records) but many of their best records have never been released on CD until now (or soon, currently in preorder)!!! A dedicated post on this monumental (I’m serious) news soon!
Six Finger Satellite’s 1995 album “Severe Exposure,” specifically the song “Rabies (Baby’s Got the)” may have influenced Daft Punk’s 1996 single Da Funk, which is also featured on their Homework album from 1997. How you may ask? Check out the keyboard stabs in Da Funk–conceptually similar to this arpeggiated keyboard part/stab in Rabies–then especially, check out that high pitched keyboard sound in Rabies–the notes played are similar to that main winding keyboard riff in Da Funk, it’s just that the riff in Da Funk has a little more frills. And notice how the keyboard sound in the first few seconds of Rabies (also used to echo the main bassline periodically after :50 seconds in the song) sounds alot like the keyboard sound used for the main melody/winding keyboard part of Da Funk and a sound used alot on Daft Punk’s Human After All album. I’m not saying these parts sound exactly the same, but that both feature conceptually similar keyboard stabs and winding synth parts with very similar notes. They also both feature steady beats–a little more rock in Rabies, still dancey/disco-ish, and a little bit more straightforward dance/funk in Da Funk.
Daft Punk obviously listened to lots of weird 70s music, disco, electronic, experimental music (see all the music they sampled for Discovery and Human After All and the songs they picked for their Electroma movie), and I would not be surprised if they may have heard about this weird American band Six Finger Satellite that was making weird 70s-ish punk-electronic hybrid punk dance music in 1995 through friends, the press, or college radio, and having eclectic experimental tastes, may have picked up the album and been impressed with Rabies, which may have consciously or subconsciously influenced Da Funk. What do you think? On first listen, you may think, “These sound nothing alike.” But keep your ear open for the conceptual similarities of the keyboard stabs, and the conceptual similarity of the notes of the main winding keyboard parts/main melody and the steady drum beats–conceptually they’re pretty similar in structure and intent. Interestingly, the soundman for Six Finger Satellite, James Murphy, would go on to start LCD Soundsystem, and would end up making a song “Daft Punk is Playing at My House,” so you can see that there are definitely some conceptual and music shared roots there.
Crazy! Voivod played a new song at the Roadburn 2012 festival in the Netherlands. The song, “Planet Earth,” is in the vein of Dimension Hatross meets Nothingface, which means it’s also kind of like Jesus Lizard meets Germbox meets King Crimson, in the best way possible. Dan Mongrain is turning out to be the perfect replacement for Piggy (RIP)!
The crowning achievement of Western music to date, Don Caballero on the American Don tour. Here’s the whole show. Fireside Bowl, Chicago, 1999. Please, if anyone has footage of the Fucking Champs show that accompanies this, let me know!!!
It can be very difficult to understand what Javascript closures are and why they are useful. The very most useful explanation I have ever found is this bit of code below, which shows how closures can make private variables in Javascript and how to create getters and setters to retrieve and manipulate the private variable.
var person = function () {
// Private
var name = "Robert";
return {
getName : function () {
return name;
},
setName : function (newName) {
name = newName;
}
};
}();
alert(person.name); // Undefined
alert(person.getName()); // "Robert"
person.setName("Robert Nyman");
alert(person.getName()); // "Robert Nyman"
In this code, a self-executing function creates an object with two methods, getName and setName. Both methods are closures which have access to the private name variable that was created in the self-executing function. The object, stored here in the person variable, does not itself have access to the private name variable. However, the getters and setters both have access to the same name variable since they were both created in the same local scope in which the closure was created. I may not be totally describing this right but if you look at the code you’ll probably figure out why it’s useful. This is the best explanation I’ve seen because it’s immediately apparent how practical this is, especially how you can limit access to and manipulation of the private variable only via the getter and setter methods.
With closure-based implementation you can have private variables and
methods (just don't expose them in the this object).
So you can do something such as:
function Book(title) {
var title_;
this.getTitle = function() { return title_; };
this.setTitle = function(title) { title_ = title; };
// should use the setter in case it does something else than
just assign this.setTitle(title); }
Code outside of the Book function can not access the member
variable directly, they have to use the accessors.
Loop is an awesome postpunk/shoegaze/psychadelic/art rock band from the 1980s, sometimes compared to earlier Spacemen 3. Kind of like mixing Suicide, Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, My Bloody Valentine, Godflesh, Swervedriver, and Sonic Youth, very droney-and repetitive but good stuff! Gilded Eternity and Fade Out seem to be their best albums…
The Trickle-Down 