The Rock Blogger

We’re in the thermo-nuclear era…

A beautiful and stark Youtube video for Godspeed You Black Emperor’s “Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls”, a musical section from their grandiose album Yanqui U.X.O. It’s amazing how political and dystopian Godspeed’s music can be without the utterance of a single lyrical verse.

Here are three incredible videos of Sunn O)))’s performance in Berlin, 2006.

In a word: monolithic.

1

2

3

Band of Horses Cease to Begin 2007. 4 Stars.

Over the holidays, I went online looking for bands I had overlooked in the past year and I came across Band of Horses, an indie rock outfit from South Carolina who have been breaking some pretty big waves over the past few years. Their sound is a delicate mixture of dream pop and folk rock traditions, creating both sprawling and inspiring anthems and intimate, laid back dirges, capturing the same drifter spirit found in My Morning Jacket and Okkervil River.

Cease to Begin opens with the stellar “Is there a Ghost” that manages to both haunt and enthrall with the use of a meager three verses. “Ode to LRC” and “Detlef Schrempf” are two of the other standouts from the disc’s first half, clearly demonstrating Ben Bridwell’s polished falsetto. The second half of the album is mostly comprised of comfortable and familiar sounding folk rock passages complete with lap steel guitar arrangements. As a whole, Cease to Begin is a wistful listening experience. While the album is rather short, clocking in at around 35 minutes, it shows just how refined and focused Band of Horses are in crafting their work.

The video for “Is There a Ghost”

Rage Against the Machine “Testify”. Directed by Micheal Moore 2000.

Been reading a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Failed States that I got for Christmas. It reminded me of this Rage Against the Machine video for “Testify”, way back from the 2000 election.
Interesting, but I still think Gore would have been a better president, even though he was merely the lesser of two evils it seems.

I also painted this:

Where is Freedom Now? By Damien Van Vroenhoven

I’ve been so busy these last couple of days, with family gatherings and such, that I haven’t had much time to blog. Hopefully, I’ll get into reviewing some of the new albums I picked up for Christmas, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here is some classic Joy Division for you. This is the video for the single “Atmosphere”, released after Ian Curtis’ death in 1980.

Have a Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2008.

I have recently acquired most of Godflesh’s catalog, having once again been fascinated by industrial metal, and I was amazed by the cover art for one of their more heavier albums.

An image of mourning, this apocalyptic pairing of the grave and industrial waste is a fitting visual description of the current technological and spiritual crisis that lies ahead of us in 2008. This album, created in 1996, seemed to anticipate the bleak forecast for the industrial-capitalist state, which currently is brewing in the dirty and over-consuming city centers of the West. They all risk collapsing into states of takers, and the thought of giving, the message of Christ, becomes overwhelmed by the mechanical roars of greed, profit or addiction.

The modern industrial representation of Christmas has slowly deafened the sentiments of charity. The Salvation Army awaits in our subway stations, because they know how much money we are throwing at each other. They are well aware of how much we consume and how much we waste. They are waiting for the scraps.

This Christmas I will pray for a more charitable spirit to come out of us, rather than being caught in the Christmas Machine that, for the most part, rewards the dominant minority of the top corporate and political class who continue to poison many of the airwaves,waterways and pathways that line our fragile world . I pray that in the new year we can open the dimensions of our thinking and contemplate what our true beleifs are and compare them to our wasteful, hateful and selfish behaviors and recognize that no one is free of sins, be they personal or social.

While their music is incredibly brutal and makes ample of use of thunderous baselines and punishing drum machines, Godflesh’s tone of opposition and lamentation seems to call to an aggrieved and existential mindset. Yet the message isn’t completely despairing, as I see it. Perhaps the imagery of Christ that Godflesh likes to juxtapose with the machinery of the state, or our bleak imperialist world view, is meant as a signal of hope amid a blackening sky of dirt and pollution, of noise and destruction. Perhaps there is still one candle that lights the others. Hope still burns in the ambers.

Peace be with you.

Last Tuesday, Pitchfork released their Top 50 Albums of 2007, naming Panda Bear’s psychedelic Person Pitch as the album of the year. While I thought the album was warm, trippy and evoked fond memories of stoned summers past, I honestly thought several other bands were more likely to take the top spot, like The National (#17), LCD Soundsystem (#2) or The Arcade Fire (#27???). Here is the full list:

50 Tinariwen - Aman Iman: Water Is Life
49 Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English
48 Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
47 Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals
46 Marissa Nadler - Songs III: Bird on the Water
45 Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36
44 Les Savy Fav - Let’s Stay Friends
43 Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
42 Ghostface Killah - The Big Doe Rehab
41 Life Without Buildings - Live at the Annandale Hotel
40 Beirut - The Flying Club Cup / Lon Gisland EP
39 The White Stripes - Icky Thump
38 Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams
37 Grizzly Bear - Friend EP
36 Iron and Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
35 Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil
34 James Blackshaw - The Cloud Of Unknowing
33 King Khan & the Shrines - What Is?!
32 Sally Shapiro - Disco Romance
31 Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
30 Caribou - Andorra
29 Bon Iver, For Emma - Forever Ago
28 Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
27 Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
26 Various Artists - After Dark
25 The Tough Alliance - A New Chance / New Waves EP
24 Dan Deacon - Spiderman Of The Rings
23 Studio - Yearbook 1
22 Okkervil River - The Stage Names
21 Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
20 Liars - Liars
19 Feist - The Reminder
18 Kanye West - Graduation
17 The National - Boxer
16 Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3
15 Justice - †
14 Deerhunter - Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP
13 Jay-Z - American Gangster
12 No Age - Weirdo Rippers
11 Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
10 Burial - Untrue
09 The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
08 Battles - Mirrored
07 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
06 Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
05 of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
04 Radiohead - In Rainbows
03 M.I.A. - Kala
02 LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
01 Panda Bear - Person Pitch

I’m down in a well and my voice can only carry so far. Raindrops take their long decent down to my face, as I look up at the overcast sky, nicely framed by the well’s circular mouth.

I blink and I am back where I started, sludging through the dirty city streets, recovering from a blast of winter. The air is cold and the silence is deaden.

Blink again and I am in some other state, my emotions are hazy colors smeared gently across an infinitely dark canvas. As my thoughts race, the colors change and eventually fade, and soon everything is black, becomes black.

The sounds carry on, through all these stages I stumble into, music that you can touch as it is so dense with ambiance, dread and strange beauty, droning with inhuman but meditative intensity.

This is the heavy ambient of Earth, Final and Sunn 0))), three experimental bands who have different stylistic nuances but share the same existential pain and entrancement. Borrowing from disparate atmospherics like Horror films and spiritual ritual, these artists will plunge you into a deeply meditative and powerful experience that may captivate and also terrify.

This is their work:

Sunn O))) Black One 2005

Earth Earth 2 1993

Final 3 2006.

As it is the holiday season, things are typically hectic around here, so I haven’t had much time to write any new feature articles, but I’ll be sure to post something substantial this weekend. In the meantime, check out this live Guided by Voices performance of their hit “Teenage FBI”.
You can find this track and about 31 others on their Greatest Hits album
Human Amusements at Hourly Rates. Take it easy.