Fluxblog #314: Electronica 1996-1999 | Godspeed You! Black Emperor • Loud Family • Heno • WheelUP
Plus a whole lot of Steely Dan on the podcast!
This week’s episode of Fluxpod is DANPILLED II, a sequel to my appearance on Jesse Hawken's show Junk Filter in which we went deep on Steely Dan. This time Jesse and I go even deeper by focusing entirely on songs, with discussions of 17 classics including "Show Biz Kids," "Deacon Blues," "Chain Lightning," "Josie," "FM," "Pretzel Logic," "Reelin' in the Years," "Black Cow," and "Don't Take Me Alive." I’ve put both episodes of Danpilled on the Fluxpod feeds, which you can find on all podcast platforms and the Fluxblog Patreon, but I recommend also subscribing to Junk Filter!
This week’s playlist is WHAT WAS ELECTRONICA? 1996-1999, which looks back on the time when electronic music – big beat, drum and bass, trip-hop – was marketed to the alternative audience. This features all the big classics, plus shows how the aesthetics of electronic music made its way into the rock and pop music of the period. [Apple Music | Spotify]
Waiting For The End
Godspeed You! Black Emperor “First of the Last Glaciers”
For a long time Godspeed You! Black Emperor specialized in compositions that evoked a crushing sense of dread and a certainty that the world was moving towards an unavoidable apocalypse in the near future. Their most recent work – 2017’s Luciferian Towers and the brand new G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END – mark an interesting tonal shift, presenting a more hopeful sound as the world becomes more overtly dystopian. To be clear, it’s not a hope that terrible things will not come, but rather than that now is the time for people to fight back against the powerful figures who have broken the world. I think these are meant to be inspirational works, grandiose compositions that respect an apocalyptic negativity but ask the listener not to give up or give in on the assumption that all is lost. The band has stated that the new album is about us all “waiting for the end,” but this time it’s not the end of all things. We’re waiting for the end of the things that are crushing humanity, waiting for a crash that can lead to something new.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Exponential Existential Horror Show
The Loud Family “Sodium Laureth Sulfate”
“Sodium Laureth Sulfate” puts you off balance from the start, blasting you with noise and clips of studio chatter, opening Interbabe Concern in a way that pushes the listener to consider that there’s something wrong with their CD. Once the song shifts into a more normal but still off-kilter pop structure it’s a different sort of fractured, with Scott Miller singing from two perspectives, one of which is rudely interrupting the other:
So you’ve got a new girl, better tell us all
about her
well, we met—
No, we were thinking of lascivious detail
I love this as the start of a song, immediately cutting through the bullshit to nudge the song into something less mundane. Of course, instead of getting something sexy, the other guy gives us something…more descriptive:
she’s a little like
tendon-slash dimension crash entropica
cryogen magenta kevlar ebola
As the song goes along we never get a clear picture of this woman, but we do get the gist of the situation – she’s stringing him along, she’s distant, she’s emotionally brutal, she’s fascinating. The other guy is concerned, but this dude is too far gone – “and the zero times she calls me back refine my soul.” He’s beyond rationalizing her behavior, she’s giving him exactly what he craves: high drama and casual cruelty! As a wise woman would write many years later: “Boys only want love if it’s torture.”
Buy it from Amazon.
If Heaven Had An Address
Heno “Creases”
The lyrics of “Creases” feel a bit like a personal essay set to a melody, with Heno starting with a thesis statement – “you can never know the extent of the pain someone’s going through” – and then outlining his experiences, his philosophy, and his plan for action in life. It’s thoughtful and clear-headed, but also direct in speaking about depression and trauma in a way that feels very particular to this moment in time. I’ve noticed that when musicians write about these topics now it’s almost always in plain and direct language that wouldn’t be too far off from, say, an Instagram caption. It makes some sense, in that being this clear about it is the most effective way of communicating these ideas and it’s a choice to be raw and vulnerable, but I do find myself yearning for more abstraction. I can imagine a version of this that isn’t quite so obvious in its language and plays more on the ambiguous feel of the melody and arrangement, which conveys a feeling of calm just on the other side of panic and chaos.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Water City Hair
WheelUP featuring Bembe Segue “Fusion”
The aptly-titled “Fusion” is dense with great sounds and strong hooks and it all adds up to something that commands physical movements, but the part of that really gets me is what Danny Wheeler does with clips of rhythm guitar and blips of keyboards throughout the composition. I love the way it sounds like those parts on another plane from the rest of the track, like something dropped in or superimposed over the more solid whole. There’s a haphazard feel to it, like there’s some degree of raw improvisation to these sampled elements – I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Wheeler manipulated them in a loose and gestural way, something deliberately unquantized in a track that’s otherwise quite tight in the bounce of its polyrhythms.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Here’s Will Butler from Arcade Fire with an essay in The Atlantic about his complicated feelings about getting back to playing live gigs again, even with the promise of the pandemic getting under control by the end of the year.
• Tegan O’Neil is back with OH, WHAT A ROGUE, a new series of incredibly thoughtful blog-posts-as-book-chapters, this time it’s all directly or loosely connected to musing on Rogue from the X-Men. Here’s part one and here’s part two.
• Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones column on Stereogum is one of my favorite things on the internet every week but I’ve particularly loved his recent posts about George MIchael’s “Faith” and “Father Figure,” INXS’s “Need You Tonight,” and Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.”