LoathsomePete

I got this a few weeks ago just out of curiosity than anything else. I had known of the group for a couple of years now, but always forgot to grab any of their albums. I can't say I was overly awed by this album, nor was I repulsed. I understand the sound it was trying to do and for what was there it had been polished nicely. Good thorough review without being verbose, what album would you recommend for someone who wants to get into this band, but wasn't given the best first impression?

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101 Albums That May Not Change Your Life, But I Really Like And You Might Too

Fruitonica

Return to Cookie Mountain is their best I'd say. Their Young Liars EP is also great.

Fruitonica

Released 1971

If the revolution ain't gon' be televised, then, ****, I'll probably miss it.

When you can appreciate a reference from an Aesop Rock track without having any idea who sang the original song it's obviously an iconic track, or maybe just title. Either way, I was about to scroll right past a blog post on Gill Scott Heron's discography until The Revolution will not be Televised caught my eye, for which I'm thankful.

There's something about the phrase that has carried its powerful sentiment and bleakly witty commentary from 1970 to the present day without losing much at all.
The song opens the album, as well as being somewhat of a black sheep, due to its spoken word, proto-rap delivery compared to the rest of the album's smooth soulful vocals. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to it's label. The message doesn't develop past that one line, and the rest of the lines are just variations on the premise. Granted they're often hilarious.

There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Now we launch into the album proper, and musically it is much more satisfying. The arrangements have a jazz vibe with funk edges and Heron's vocals are emotively striking and make for some surprisingly strong hooks. Home is Where the Hatred Is in particular only takes one listen to sink into your mind.
There's something timeless about the piano melodies, in the way that you'll throw the album on and a sense of familiarity will wash over you.

Lyrically Heron is at his strongest, with stark imagery and commentary fuelled equally by anger at and hope for his society. Nothing matches the ferocity and radicalism of The Revolution will not be Televised, but his more subtle and nuanced performances eventually paint a richer image. The title track, wherein he delves into his childhood is one of the most touching moments of the album.

Jagged jigsaw pieces
Tossed about the room
I saw my grandma sweeping
With her old straw broom
But she didn't what she was doing
She could hardly understand
That she was really sweeping up..
Pieces of a man

jackhammer

Great choice for Gil Scott Heron. More people need to hear this guy. Although it's not on this album 'The Bottle' is one of my very favourite tracks ever. Effortlessly cool.

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Fruitonica

As someone who actually likes Pitchfork, I didn't like this post. Which basically spurred me onto this pointless ramble. Have some fun hopefully.

A hipster is a person who is overtly and self-consciously cool. Coolness in this sense is a state of being, to a hipster, ultimate coolness would be akin to Nirvana. However, coolness is fickle and must be constantly pursued, never fully attained. You might come close, but eventually it will slip through your fingers, much like that pesky roadrunner (a key difference is that hilarity rarely ensues).



The main way in which a hipster attempts to cultivate their coolness, is through the consumption of media, most prominently music. And this is why they're generally so disliked, because of the shallowness of their appreciation, they reduce any art to its cool factor. Music is turned inside out, from something you engage with personally, to something that is worn for the world to admire. A hipster's tastes aren't genuine, they are transient, shifting on a fashionable whim. Because of this, it's pointless to try and define 'hipster music', but obscurity is generally desirable, because it denotes authenticity.

This search for credibility bleeds into the rest of the hipster's lifestyle; these are the type of kids who probably wish they grew up in Sierra Leone, because how ****ing authentic is that? (Any musical argument amongst hipsters can be won with the phrase, 'Yeah, but I was a child soldier'). But because hipsters generally come from affluent families, they have to make-believe poverty by shopping for leggings in thrift shops and eating dirt mixed with flour, which they probably STOLE. This can be observed through the emaciated frame of a true hipster, and it is often remarked that the saddest thing* is a slightly fat person trying desperately to fit in with a group of real hipsters. This slight build benefits in other ways, the lightest and lankiest hipsters will be able to lope ahead of the pack and reach fresh bands before they can be heard by anyone.

According to Dreadnaught hipsters ride fixed gear bikes, which I did not know. Though it makes sense in a way, extra gears being a mark of the Bourgeoisie, which, as far as social classes go is stridently uncool. A little research on this informed me that the coolest hipsters have taken to riding fixed gear bikes made of brightly coloured hemp macrame and their own quizzical expressions. That's pretty cool.

Ramble ramble ramble....

*Apart from a retarded man who is crying and promising a broken egg that it will still be a chicken someday.

simplephysics

Nice one.

I think it's fairly easy to spot the difference between a hipster and someone who genuinely enjoys stuff like independent music and Sylvia Plath.

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Fruitonica

Perhaps, living where I do I don't encounter them - I'm not really sure if they exist or not. Seems to be a label people throw around when they think someone is pretentious.

I don't really like Plath, haven't read much of her stuff but the few poems I did read seemed seriously outclassed by Hughes Birthday Letters. Maybe just because I wasn't forced to analyse them as much.

Fruitonica

One of the more disorientating moments that can spring from listening to music is an achingly familiar sound that you just cannot place, usually coming in the form of a sample. You can drive yourself insane trying to remember where you first heard it, on the flip side, if you can preserve this moment in your head long enough to run accross the original encounter, it's incredibly satisfying. Or maybe that's just me.

This post was set in motion a few weeks ago when I went for a bleary eyed, early morning trip to McDonalds after spending the night on some derelict wharf, with my skateboard as a pillow.
Standing at the end of the line, the siren announcing a finished order blared out, and maybe it was just my scattered hung-over brain, but it snatched me away to some other place, a place I'd been before, but the moment slipped from my fingers and I was left standing nonplussed in front of a depressingly fat counter girl.

The obvious answer was that I'd heard it before at McDonalds, it didn't feel right, but after a day of mind racking I let it go. Until just yesterday when I thought enough time had passed since my listening burnout, to throw I'll Sleep When You're Dead on again. And as TPC faded, it hit me, the siren was identical to the ascending wail that is so distinctive in Smithereens (Stop Crying).

Do American McDonalds use the same siren? I'm not sure but otherwise it seems like some pretty impressive crate digging. In some ways it seems like a bit of a lost opportunity to add some thematic flourishes with the sample, after all the consumerist madness of EMG is only one song away, so why did he choose it for the stream of consciousness tale of a graffiti artist in some cyberpunk nightmare?

But if you indulge in a little over analysis, this creates a more interesting subtext. Have the Golden Arches taken over the world? Is Ronald Mcdonald lording it over us all as the villainous Mayor Doombug? I'm sure El-P wasn't thinking of this when he made the song, it just fitted nicely in his claustrophobic soundscape, but hey, little things like this are fun to obsess over. Hopefully it wont lead to some Helter Skelter Manson scenario, but anyway.

Fruitonica

Released 2008, Doomtree Records.

Mineshaft 02:54
Everything Floats 02:44
Press On 02:14
551 03:40
Kites 03:32
Veteran 2:43
Cubano 3:00

Female MC's are a pretty rare breed, even after you drag yourself out of the misogynistic dross of mainstream rap. So when I stumbled accross Dessa after reading she was POS's ex, I immediately went looking for her EP. And it took thirty seconds into the first track to know I was onto a gem, that kills just about every other hip hop I've come accross this year.

Mineshaft is the perfect intro opening with flowing violins and a glitchy CD skip, injecting some negative space into the rhythm. We hear her whisper a warning, "To the bottom of the mineshaft" and away we go. Twenty mintues will not be enough.
To begin with, Dessa has a delightful voice. Clear and precise, but with soft edges and an effortlessly nimble delivery. Mineshaft begins at a spoken word pace, and quickens as subtle layers are added to the beat, midway through verse two she has reached a tongue fraying velocity without losing any clarity. This building speed is integral to the song, and the ease she plays with tempo is the mark of a consumate rapper. When it comes to the chorus she sings some damn catchy hooks as well.

Next up comes Everything Floats, featuring Doomtree comrade Cecil Otter. A blend of keys and strings strikes a far more menacing tone, but lyrically, it continues the theme that Mineshaft began. This is a very dark album, not El-P 'end of the world' dark, but a startling personal depth of unhappiness, apathy and resignation underpins False Hopes. She paints us a vivid picture of a mind wracked with hopeless depression, and Otter takes us outside to watch the self destruction.

"See it's nobodies fault her inner child drowned
In a river, while she cried deeper and(?)
Hmm, I think I'll swim a while"

Thankfully, her confessional poetry is lashed with some lovely lines and a great sense of humour, not that it brightens the mood much, we all know the feeling of being torn between tears and laughter. It's not a good one."I'm not a writer, I just drink a lot about it."

Press On is a bit of a black sheep amongst the tracks, the most upbeat moment in the bleakness, with a very bouncy beat and chorus and an almost battle rap aesthetic to the lyrics, although Dessa takes plenty of shots at herself amongst the aggrandisement. Sims has a solid guest verse, and overall it's a decent track but one of the weaker of the bunch, especially because it has a fairly forgettable hook on a song that needs one quite desperately.
We get back to the gloom with 551, with opens with an oddly muffled beat over some swirling background before the piano riff kicks in and Dessa spins a narrative of (once again) a hopelessly depressed woman and the breakdown of a relationship.

"She's a latter-day saint, but she's a Saturday sinner
Suicide sunday for desert, weekends drinking her dinner
The worry keeps her slender the pills keep her awake
Her man can't make her happy but he helps to still the shakes."
And if you can stand the sentimentality, the chorus is just lovely and the best example of her beautifully melodic singing voice.

Kites, is a soft, dreamy piece with sung with an understated, performance from Dessa. I'm liking it quite a lot right now, but normally it just floats past me in a haze during the course of the album and truthfully I thought it was much shorter until I looked at it's length a moment ago.

Veteran ramps the energy levels back up and is a totally stellar track, in particular the sinuous wailing horn and little jangles of chimes in the beat. Dessa's delivery here is much more forceful than previous entries, and the chorus, despite being a bit of a downer tone wise, sinks into your mind and makes you hum along.
The EP ends with Cubano, another great track with lovely mellow piano based production and Dessa's shifting tempo washing back and forwards in a brilliant demonstration of flow. Once again their is a disparity between the relatively happy music and the resolutely depressive lyrics, including this little gem which manages to distil the essence of False Hope's identity.

Cause a little bit of melancholy,
Never did hurt anybody,
Even if it is a sickness, I'm oddly convinced,
At least it's honest.
When life gets so tragic comic,
A mattress with no sheets on it,
The fact is you have it, the task is to want it.

simplephysics

Sounds like an interesting listen, and I'm all for the advancement of Midwestern hip hop . Not to mention Doomtree gave us P.O.S, so I trust Dessa is nothing short of amazing. Could you hook me up with a link?

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