Written for Collapse Board
Everett True reckons that Artists Should Stick To Art instead of making mixtapes of obvious dad rock. If mixtapes made by artists are so disappointing in real life, I think we should invent some fantasy selections.
For example: Continue reading
Written for Collapse Board
A few weeks ago, Chris Razor wrote about clank – a new genre title he’d coined, and I was grateful, because I’d been trying to think of a word for it for ages. I was getting fed up of saying “experimental electronica”, because that makes it sound like it sounds more like this and it doesn’t. Instead, it sounds like this.
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Written for Collapse Board
“Mostly only art created by women has any validity. The male experience has been created and recreated so often” – Everett True, 1992
That is such bulls***. It’s like saying that only Tuvan throat singing/rock hybrids have any validity because you don’t get much of that, either. (And, f***, it’s good stuff.) I don’t flip the sleeve over to check the gender before I’ll listen to the record, any more than I’d think too much about whether they were, say, Turkish. And, yes, a Turkish act does bring a certain flavour to the mix that you rarely get with non-Turkish acts. It’s informed and shaped by its Turkishness but not wholly defined by it because it’s more than that and to reduce it to that is to insult it.
Take Aylin Aslim, for example. I don’t know who she is, but I love her. I don’t have the slightest clue what she’s singing about (though Google translate tells me it’s called “ghoul”). There’s definitely a Turkishness to what she does, but I don’t set out to listen to Turkish folk. I just like this one – her – because she has such a don’t-give-a-f*** attitude and playful energy that makes her an absolute joy to listen to.
One of the most buzzed-about bands at SXSW this year, LA’s Glasser is actually Cameron Mesirow, the daughter of one of the Blue Man Group and a 70s New Wave chanteuse. The stylish, sophisticated electronica with its strong, haunting vocals has invited comparisons with Bat For Lashes, Goldfrapp and Björk, though I’d also throw the Cocteau Twins and Pram into this mix. Signed to hip label True Panther, Glasser’s album Ring was described by the BBC as “a wide-eyed, tribal, multi-textured menagerie of a record”.
Reinspired 