KISH KASH >>>>>>>>> SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW

Better lyrics than anything on "Speakerboxxx": "A.D.I.D.A.S."*
Better beats than anything on "The Love Below": "U Know I Love U"

I mean, yeah, I still dig on "Hey Ya" but that's like saying I thought Liam Neeson was cool in The Phantom Menace.

Kish Kash isn't even on fucking metacritic! Behold all the Outkast slobbering tho: Only Rolling Stone and the Austin Chronicle dare give it below 70.

"A witty comedy with a message."

I mean, I know the reason for this, but can people's musical expanses really be THAT narrowminded, seeing as the progression from Rooty to Kish Kash was pretty much plain for all to see?

As sad as the Kish Kash situation is, I was one of four people who voted for the Chemical Brothers' Come With Us in 2002's P&J (and it's one of the six albums on that list I still actually like). I think we're not supposed to dance what with there being wars and Osama and shit.

I've seen so many local rock-centric lists where Outkast on the one hand stick out like a sore thumb - the only "black" music, the only American pop music - and yet on the other hand accord with the rest of the list's vague respectability (Outkast as innovators, moving beyond boundaries of hip hop etc.). Basement Jaxx's relationship to black music is one step removed, they're from the UK, they're no longer making obvious chart hits and their respectability isn't quite so glaring. Instead of providing the bridge between the populist music that the critics want to engage with and all the stuff they actually engage with (same ol' indie rock) they sorta fall between the two stools. It may not even be that the listmakers didn't like Kish Kash; perhaps there just weren't nearly as many reasons to listen to it in the first place.

It's not fair to say this is the only or even predominant reason for Outkast's greater critical success obv - there are a lot of people who love populist hip hop who also love S/TLB, and a lot of people who love both it and Kish Kash.

Goddamn.

Also, even though I love Speakerboxxx way more than Dre's record, is it just riding the rockist coattails of its counterpart? I mean, Ghettomusick and horn sections aside, it's not THAT different from other hip-hop and from the last 'Kast record, right?

It's just really good.

somewhat ironically i understand all the criticisms for the Outkast album(s) perfectly, yet it's still just about edged my top pick of the year from Basement Jaxx - i love the ideas of it too much, am swung by the promises it makes (but doesnt necessarily deliver on) - and if nothing else just ignore the weaker parts and enjoy my own definition of the album (single disc combining tracks from both or whatever)

Ew, now I hate the future.

TLB is, however, a straight up masterpiece IMHO, a once-in-a-lifetime record that A3K will have to live up to for the rest of his carreer. I will not add to the praise og this marvelous and imaginative and balanced work of art - others have already said it far better than I am able to. But I will say this: Both the Jaxx record and the André record are clearly made out of an artistic desire, no, a desperate need to change directions, and for me it is clear that André has succeeded to a much larger extent.
His songs were initially meant to be the soundtrack for a film, and he has internalized them for the past three years or so, figuring out how to make good songs when you are a rapper, using all your arsenal of inspiration from that musical game. The difference between the two records may actually be that the Jaxx are running beautifully and inventively out of inspiration, trying to press and squeeze the music they love towards something they don't even know what is themselves. They are stressed and they don't have much to give from. André, however, is using his rich hip hop background as the template for making great songs. He has already left his former artistic selv behind, and is not clinging to it like the Jaxx.

It follows then, of course, that whereas The Jaxx are still discovering a tiny bit of new ground on ntheir new album, André is having fun inside already known boundaries (which he is stretching to the fullest, though).

Does this make sense?

Wha? Even "Good Luck" and "Right Here's the Spot" (esp. the chorus) and "Living Room" and "Hot N Cold"?

Dizzee only returned to do his second verse after months of waiting

Was this, er, after he was stabbed?

(nb: parade is my favorite prince album)

Not trying to make a universal truth out of this, but as I said, I think it goes for 'Lucky Star' and 'Cish Cash', at least. And also to a certain extent for 'Good Luck' (which is really a rock song, not that this is a bad thing or anything), except for the beginning. They all kinda sound like that first mash-up from the 2many DJ's record, I think it was 'Where's Your Head at'/'Peter Gunn Theme'.

Dizzee only returned to do his second verse after months of waiting
Was this, er, after he was stabbed?

No, I think it was quite a bit earlier, to be honest. It had more to do with all the fuzz surrounding 'I Luv U'.

How were their sales traditionally? Rooty must have gotten into Chemical Brothers territory did it? But then that was on the back of a big summer single. I guess part of the problem is the dance people didn't bother cos it ain't dance music in the old sense and then the pop people never got to hear it as a result.

not being truthful in a song? BURN THEM!

Good Luck - again there is nothing synthetic about the feelings communicated and evoked through this track - more power rock then power rock ffs!

Since I Left You - this track was always beyond the concept of song, it's not even a goodbye, it's the echo of a goodbye, reverberating around a room long since left empty - hence good

"Digital Love" is easily one of the best Daft Punk songs, I'll admit. It's their best simalcrum of PURE HUMAN EXPRESSION.

"Good Luck" has a fine vocal performance, as do most of the songs on the album. It's just that Jaxx keeps trying to distract us from the PURE HUMAN EXPRESSION cuz they're not the ones creating it.

You realize how pathetic you people sound when you can't react with anything more than "you like Limp bizkit"?

I think the truly appropriate metaphor for them is the thrift store.

how can 'Digital Love' be a simalcrum tho? i mean they ARE humans - would the song sound better if sung in a normal voice? i personally don't think so.

And "them not-singin' parts, those goes on too long" doesn't work as an argument when you consider that people used to dance to Larry Levan spinning First Choice's "Doctor Love" for twenty minutes straight.

Do we have to dredge up the PFork reviews of Discovery and Rooty again?

Nate I'd like to see you dance to Discovery. And complaining that a certain album's songs are TOO LONG isn't me saying that all songs over four minutes are too long, you know? wtf?

OK! And for my next feat I will jump up and down (or "pogo") to Road to Ruin! The wondrous contortional amazements baffle and defy audiences worldwide!

I get mad when a band fucks around with the beat too much and you have to stand there and wait till they're done.

Anthony Miccio, South Bronx uprocking champion of 1983, suffers an unexpected setback.

Soundslike someone who truly loves to dance. (And no, that's not ironic.)

xposts like crazy

ha ha, i sound like The Architect (only not as smart, he was a machine after all)

Kish Kash I like because it's a big, messy, overripe pop record that sounds like it's about to burst: it's not my favourite album this year but it seems to sum up a lot of what I heard in pop music this year.

One of the more telling things I've noticed about critical praise for Speakerboxx/The Love Below is the lack of any specific songs being mentioned in the reviews.

I definitely catch the clear aesthetic of these groups. It's just that I don't see the outcome as being particularly entertaining (let alone movement-inspiring). The reason why I tend to call it prog-disco is cuz it seems like people are appreciating the mentality of the creators and the audible complexity of the work more so then reacting to it emotionally.

BNW OTM - I can't really deny that S/TLB is a nice big IDEA for an album!

That's a more blurred line then I think you give it credit. Excited about the vocals or excited about the beats = still excited.

And I'll definitely admit that while I love S/TLB, I'm way more interested in negative reviews than positive ones (I've asked Jess to send me his aborted Seattle Weekly review when he finds it). The reviews are painfully vague but I think that says more about reviewers than the album.

Honestly what rubbish. Do you want to see photos? How on earth is Daft Punk audibly complex anyway? Have you even bothered listening to Discovery or does it just get lumped in with Kish Kash for the sake of it.

Anthony I think people feel insulted by yr mentalist generalisations about their not reacting emotionally to music they love.

Tom, if that's the case then I'd like to seem them express how it affects them emotionally. Most of the compliments these albums get seem much more academic. Rise to the challenge! Or if failing that, remind me I like Limp Bizkit.

Tom otm but also I think it's a fairly lazy inclusion of Discovery here, I really don't see any comparison between it and Kish Kash, anymore than (tenuous enough Flylife comparisons aside) I see any musical common ground between Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx.

The only common ground is in terms of both acts status as dance acts who have crossed over, which isn't really common ground at all.

So Much Love To Give was one of the biggest dance tunes of last year over here, according to HMV. I can show you dozens of places where I reacted to it emotionally but I don't see that that should be necessary.

I just think at this point you should accept you've taken a totally US centric perspective on this and you really aren't sure what else to say. That said I hate to damn US IlXors since I am fairly certain a great deal of them didn't treat Discovery as an ironic statement about modern pop music.

I don't know if Bangalter/Guy-Man were being ironic with Discovery, but I suspect if you think their intention matters more than how it was receieved then you need to think again. To be honest to listen to Discovery it's difficult to detect a note of cynicism. The fact it is also used as a soundtrack for an anime film which alot of people also found quite affecting suggests it wasn't a sly statement either.

And most US Ilxors kind of wish they didn't live in the US (and certainly wouldn't want to be mistaken for having the tastes of an average American) so of course they liked Discovery.

It's not so much that the intention matters more, but assuming that intention is the only way I can explain why they made the artistic choices they did. I don't know if Stanley Kubrick was truly a misanthrope but his movies imply the perspective of one.

Xgau pretty much got how I felt in his review of the album.

Discovery [Virgin, 2001]
These guys are so French I want to force-feed them and cut out their livers. Young moderns who've made the Detroit-Berlin adjustment may find their squelchy synth sounds humanistic; young moderns whose asses sport parallel ports may dance till they crash. But Yank fun is much less spirituel, so that God bless America, "One More Time" is merely an annoying novelty stateside. The way our butts plug in, there are better beats on the damn Jadakiss CD. C+

I think the truth is some US ILXors, some of the best, better than me anyway, are so well up on things that when a Discovery comes about they've already been down with the scene from which it emerges.

Others on the other hand seem to wait for something different to come onto the radar through critical appraisal and then shoot it down. It's like indie fans slating the Streets last year, what the fuck did they expect it to sound like?

Just because something appears on your radar does not mean you can pan it with the same level of accuracy as the usual stuff.

It's not so much that the intention matters more, but assuming that intention is the only way I can explain why they made the artistic choices they did. I don't know if Stanley Kubrick was truly a misanthrope but his movies imply the perspective of one.

So you explain your dislike of the album by assuming you know why the band made it and what the point of it was?

x-post hehe I knew it was basically Europhobia as per. Just cos XGau has blindspots doesn't mean you have to poke at your eyes too!

Jaxx = humans trying to say they feel great but the robots keep interrupting them

actually this sounds way more intresting than the other two. which it also kind of is, even if 'kish kash' is somewhat failed.

I still love

Mike they're pushing the idea of the climactic moment in a dance song - they remind me of Branca actually, but my reaction to that sort of bludgeoning is pretty much all visceral/emotional/physical.

I don't think what can we get away with is a bad question when making a record like So Much Love To Give, they're basically seeing what the absolute limit of their own formula is. I think though a significant thing people forget is that if someone else did it and the filters etc weren't as nice and it just wasn't put together aswell, it would be absolute crap.

I also think it's important to think of it as a creative process, I mean I don't think they knocked out So Much Love To Give in 2 days, the fact is it NEVER could have happened without their respective histories nor would it have worked without those.

I guess it's a bit modern art in a way then, if I'm not exaggerating here.

Don't you dare diss the man behind the "What's Happening?" theme song, Anthony.

When I listen to Kish Kash, I don't hear "vocals being subverted by producers whose main interest aesthetic was no longer consistent danceability but some kind of faux-cheese ironic pop commentary": I guess by 'faux-cheese ironic pop commentary', w/r/t the Jaxx, you'd mean the sort of polyglot way that different ideas from all over the place are crammed in, almost baroque... is that right? Because to me that doesn't feel ironic, but joyful, and I think that would be the point where I start being completely unable to understand your argument at all. ;)

(and, if so, how is that any more a 'faux-cheese ironic pop commentary' than Hey Ya?)

x-post with Michael: perhaps oddball is the wrong word, but I think the marriage of that really light drumbeat with the bassline and the one long stretched synth, and the vocal is quite weird. it's a totally analogue track I accept but the parts are fitted together in an unusual way.

I'd like to thank everybody who actually debated with me and acknowledged my points on some level rather than just dismissing my qualms with the album as beneath contempt. Graci.

My point, Nick!

My great test of ILM will come one day when I get around to buying Discovery and seeing if Xgau is right or not.

Sonic invention and hoopla is tied in with reception for alot of people, it's a real club thing but I suspect people who've never been clubbing still get it. I only say it's a real club thing because in a great live mix when a DJ drops something particularly weird at the right time it has this same impact, respect for the sonic invention becomes waving your hands or cheering or dancing. Not writing stuff on here. At least not until Monday.

(x-post...or is it???)

I think homogenity of many of the tracks on Kish Kash is one of the best things about the album - the way you hear so many different and disparate sounds but they're all woven together rather than just layered next to or on top of one another.

Do leave me out of this, won't you?

first, tim has a post waay above that discusses consensus/tokenism or whatevr regarding the Outkast album, and i think he would appreciate seeing the list here as a good example fo what he was discussing.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/special/2003top20.html

next, anthony, as one of the self-hating americans on this board, i want to say, and hopefully i speak for all of us, that i became a europhile after getting into european music. buying a daft punk record turned me into a europhile, not the other way around ;-)

But Dan OTM -- just cos indie boyz like Outkast, that doesn't make S/TLB bad at all, though you *do* have to wonder what's in their heads (ie they'll say Outkast are the *only* black US pop they like *at all*).

'prog disco'???? I've loved two of these bands for a good few years b4 i'd even heard of ILX, but what are you on with the 'personal expression' stuff. All these guys' LPs are very moving.

i stopped reading/writing about pop in 1999, but more and more i think it's stayed the same and i've moved on. that writing is so tired. i've liked jaxx since 'fly life' and 'kish kash' is brill, so fuck all the hataz.

Shoehorning The Rapture and Basement Jaxx into the same scene is weird enough, but surely getting Dizzee Rascal onto a track before most people had ever heard of him qualifies as engaging with your contemporaries?

It's ironic that Kish Kash is the first Jaxx album I've loved all the way through! (I haven't heard Rooty yet, this was because I hated Romeo for about a year before I capitulated.)

In what way have The Rapture stolen anyone's thunder?!

Kish Kash > S/TLB because I have to use the skip button too much on the latter.

Sweet Lord. 'Good Luck' is in my all-time top ten this month. How anyone could disagree is beyond me. D'n'B!!

Rooty is 'mazin, buy it NOW

Perfect songs on Speakerboxx/The Love Below: about eleven. ("Ghettomusick," "The Rooster," "Bowtie," "Unhappy," "Knowing," "Flip Flop Rock," "Hey Ya!," "Spread," "Roses," "Behold A Lady," "A Life in the Day of Andre Benjamin,")

The numbers don't lie!

Either way, there's just as much filler on Kish Kash as on either of the two Outkast discs.

A great band starts to think it can do the impossible; releases overblown, overlong epic 2 disc; said disc is either overpraised or overcriticized for bravery/bloat (pick one); people that say they love it don't listen to it very much as the years go on, instead opting for superior early material; years later, you put it on and discover that there were some pretty great songs strewn about in the big mess, make a mix CD and are happy (of course you could just skip to this now)....

In short it's good, but not even in the same league as Stankonia or Aquemini (or their first two for that matter, which are very underrated).

If you are, then we are obv. sharing the same inventor, since I must ditto about 'Supersonic'. The singer sounds like a cut-rate Siouxsie Sioux (who aces "Cish Cash", incidentally).

Kish Kash is a victim of the hype machine, but I can still dance to 95% of it.

One question: Why the hell IS JC-whatisface on there? Timber-flake assulting the musical public is bad enough.

Because he rawks!

I respectfully disagree, yo.

Lars m'dear, with all respect, agreeing would go against all my musical beliefs.

Yes! I would have posted it on the singles of 2004 thread but someone had beaten me to it.

Sorry Third Nic.

Therefore it is pretty much scientifically impossible for Kish Kash to have more filler than Sbox/Love Below.

I have gotten to the point where I like Love Below a lot up to Hey Ya. After that it falls off pretty badly. Never got into Sbox at all, aside from 3-4 tracks.

Trudat, but it recovers for 'Dracula's Wedding', 'Take Off Your Cool' and 'Vibrate'!!! And 'Roses' is cool, too! These 14-15 tracks would, if isolated, make an album in themselves, and since hip hop and r&b albums are ALWAYS too long anyway, whydont we just pretend that they do???

TLB 4-evah!

And it's not that Sbox is bad... it's just kind of alright...

PS Also not that Sbox/LB is being punished for being liked by indie rockers... more that that's an excellent leading indicator of it not being very good... sort of like dance fans loving the Verve, if that works as a parallel...

i havent heard the whole outkast opus. i cant compare. i realized at a certain point that I only liked "hey ya" because of the video, and i wouldnt be surprised if others have had this realization, nor would i be surprised if the same thing happened to others within the next few months.

ARGH yet another band that everyone around me who "knows better" seems to hate for no discernable reason (it's an arguable point but I think "Bittersweet Symphony" was easily one of the best singles to come out that year).

Only liking "Hey Ya" for the video strikes me as being akin to only liking a red velvet cake for the Waterford platter it's presented upon.

PS I think Bittersweet Symphony is great actually! Other than that tho...

hmm?

Er, drop me a line on that, I can't seem to find it.

'Discovery' is ace tho, don't see any real point of comp btween Jaxx and DP

But it reminds me of one of my favorite Stankonia tracks (which comes well after "Humble Mumble")

It still is kinda weird Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx were compared in the first place here, I mean Andrew otm, I still can't really see any common ground.

Er uh um both on Astralwerks?

I don't think it's quite punishing the album to suggest that there may be reasons why S/TLB might do insanely well critically and KK less so which aren't just that the first is much better than the second. If anything a lot of this comes down to bad "judgment" by Basement Jaxx and clever judgment by Outkast. Non hip-hop kids who would like to connect with hip hop but can't easily are ripe to fall for all of the "hooks" Outkast have strewn in their path (clearly pronounced ambition, non-rap genre excursions, lotsa (non-R&B) singing).

Whereas the non-dance kids who want to get into dance are, for maybe the first time, more willing to like something minimal rather than maximal. All of the "dance" music at rock/indie clubs - from The Rapture and !!! to The Strokes and The White Stripes - is built around comparatively minimal repetitious grooves. If Kish Kash had all been along the vein of "Where's Your Head At" and "Cish Cash" I warrant it would have done much better with this audience (although it might not have saved it for the house fans). The indie/rock media tends to hype up dance acts when they mirror the rock acts they're into. Hence the easy parallels b/w The Chemical Bros and britpop, which then shifted to Chemical Bros and orchestrated psyche-rock (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips etc.) as the mood of the indie/rock media shifted to these bands. Setting Sun was paid comparatively little attention when it came out despite being both a clear continuation of Surrender and its equal, perhaps because by that point the psychedelia-obsession bubble had burst.

The irony is, in going in choosing to go in *every* direction in a maximalist fashion, the contemporary album Kish Kash most resembles is S/TBL. I can assume that Outkast escape the fate of Basement Jaxx because there is no expectation on the part of the indie/rock side that hip hop *should* mirror it except in broad philosophical terms (terms which Andre's "beyond rap" development meets admirably). Certainly other recent rock kid rap-crossover touchstones (Jurassic 5, Black Eyed Peas' second album, and now intriguingly Missy's Under Construction) have little discernible relationship to the specific developments in rock at the time which they won over rock kids' hearts.

I'm trying not to attack the Outkast album directly though Dan because I've only heard it at other people's houses and such, which is hardly the best way to assess an album's qualities. I reserve the right to be irritated by the sheer volume of critics who make it no. 1 on album lists that are otherwise entirely indie-rock or some other genre which owes fealty to same.

9 albums of one identifiable genre and then at the top one completely different album - more odd.

xpost

Has anyone here filled a floor, or seen a floor filled, by anything off Kish Kash? It seemed to me to be designed for reviewing rather than dancing.

1. The Love Below (Intro)
2. Ghettomusick
3. Spread
4. Happy Valentine's Day
5. Bowtie
6. She Lives In My Lap
7. The Way You Move
8. Dracula's Wedding
9. Knowing
10. Unhappy
11. Where Are My Panties?
12. Prototype
13. Flip Flop Rock
14. Hey Ya!
15. She's Alive
16. Church
17. Vibrate
18. Reset
19. Bowtie (Postlude)

I've danced madly to 'Lucky Star' & 'Plug It In' and seen other people do so, (for reference, this has been at the It Came From The Sea club night in Brighton) - I don't know about "filling" a floor, though, I can't remember how the amount of people dancing varied when those tracks came on. All I can say is that the people I know who love those tracks DEFINITELY love them as tracks to dance to, not to stroke their chins and say "how clever" to or any shit like that.

I think that this is OTM, though. KK isn't really a house record, but more of a maximal rock record, which happens to be played on samplers to a great extent. Many of the beats straight up aren't house, but power pop/r&r. NOTHING wrong with that, but that would explain the low danceability. For some people, at least.

(xp)

a. i am not sure what was particular gained - except for riding out a contract - by splitting the difference between andre and boi. one of the things that made outkast great (when they were) (which was fairly often, up through stankonia) or tolerable (when they were off) (which was less often but still pretty frequent by anyone's standards) is that they complimented each other so well, while balancing out the other's excesses/predliections. it was impossible to call dre the "arty" one and boi the "hip-hop" one before the new albums because the lines were so smudged through their collaboration that you'd be hard pressed to tell where one began and the other ended. and it's obvious now that it wasn't some bryan/brian or wobble/pil thing where a seemingly emblematic member leaves and is revealed to be the lynchpin - consciously or not - on which the whole thing turned. because both albums are pretty fucking mediocre. i described the process - in the abortive seattle weekly review anthony was talking about upthread - as a couple breaking up and sitting down, grudgingly but amicably, to split up their posessions, trying to enforce "reasonable" splits of personality, of life, where none could reasonably exist after so long. (obviously this had rather personal resonance for me at the time the albums came out.)

b. outkast once made amazing hip-hop records. "players ball" came on BET the other night while i was making dinner and i was floored to remember what a great rapper andre once was. so, yeah, i am a bit disappointed that he's seeming abandoned his hip-hop voice for some sort of random pick'n'mix eclecticism. sue me. (what made "elevators" such a great record is NOT that it sounded "weird" or "un-hip-hop" - "ooh, it sounds like sun ra and ar kane!" - but that it sounded like a weird hip-hop record!! and also a good hip-hop record. there's something to be said for attempting to expand the limits of a genre without breaking them...the carduccian idea of how much harder it is to expand an existing genre rather than scribbling all over the page willy nilly. you could say that's what dre's doing with "hey ya", but i just hear a mess of hooks and ideas searching for a sonic framework.)

c. prince (and george clinton) (and sun ra) (and lee perry) (and any other weird black guy probably championed by greg tate at some point) make for very bad influences, especially consciously. all were very conscious of the tradition of black (and white) (and green) music, and probably (certainly by prince's time) conscious of the tradition of black "outsider" musicians. but none of them were working consciously within that tradition of black outsider musicians, which is the undeniable feeling i get from andre. it's the difference between doing your own thing because you are compelled and trying to live up to something. (if anything all the carping about andre being too "white" is the biggest red herring of all.) (also, he's just not as talented - solo - as any of them.) (and that's no real crime.)

I disagree. Clearly the hardest thing is to make something essential when all genre walls have fallen away and you choose to embrace all possibilities. That's what Dre3K has done, and he gets away with it! That is, in mye opinion, the greatest achevement of thet record.

That you get great and interesting results from experimenting within genres is true, as well. And the internal dynamic of such music is often better. But that just makes Dre's record even more impressive. There is no contradictory relationship between the two modes of approach.

but none of them were working consciously within that tradition of black outsider musicians, which is the undeniable feeling i get from andre. it's the difference between doing your own thing because you are compelled and trying to live up to something.

Can anyone, at this point in history, with half an idea of what's gone before and how the media/music business works, actually work within any tradition unconsciously anymore?

i forgot to mention the hubris the album has induced in writers (and listeners, to some extent), ala douglas wolk's assertion that "ghettomusik", "discovered rave, and improved upon it's music." like, wha??

xpost - "not consciously" does NOT = "unconsciously"!!

I agree, that is obviously pure bollocks.

Anyway, my entire take on _TLB_ is colored by the fact the first song I heard off of it was "She Lives In My Lap".

This is beyond me as a description of 'hey ya!'. If it's an honestly held opinion, then fair nuff, I suppose, but the disdain for this record is really crazy IMO. Is it novelty? I was a hip-hop fan in provincial England in my teens, so not exactly picking through the crates, but I don't see how it's all that novelty, unless, like, 'cold lampin with flava' is novelty.

I reckon Kish Kash is better as an album, but I don't see why there needs to be a pissing contest. Ditto all the Neps vs Timbaland stuff.

(Major xpost, but I'll go ahead and post this.)

george clinton = a fucking weirdo

traditions = good when they actually create a framework to be used/expanded/built up/broken down.

= bad when the "tradition" is one of "exploding" the idea of existing framework

(can you honestly imagine what, say, someone following the "tradition" of mr. bungle would be like?)

dan you're basically making my point for me! the problem is that he specifically IS setting out to imitate something, consciously or not...the guise of all-gates-open eclecticism!

haha nick that's subtrifean at best.

Why is that a problem?

it's a problem because i can't think of a single good piece of music that's been produced under that guise.

i also don't think you can escape the context that, unlike prince, clinton, ra, perry, andre did not start out the complete master of his own destiny, and most of the work he is revered for was produced in collaboration, which somewhat warps the idea that he's as sui generis as any of his heroes.

george clinton = david thomas

andre3000 = steve malkmus

(one for the indie kids)

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain > (though just one >) The Modern Dance, dawg.

Um, unlike Clinton???

Read Jess's Kish Kash best album of the year deal on his website to see a conceptual appreciation of Kish Kash.

nick that's the "concept" of 75% of recorded music.

unlike every pop song recorded over the last ten plus years?

(haha anthony that was uh my whole point, you know?)

It’s fairly simple to blow apart the rockist fallacy from the inside by exposing just how mediated, processed, and collaged music has been since the advent of recording. It’s another thing to make it actually rock and funk and do all the other stuff the Jaxx do here.

- i start by explaining that i feel that basement jaxx have reached a point where they can incorporate any sound into their basic set up without it feeling necessarily out of place.

- i paraphrase from sasha-frere jones' review of rooty in the village voice where he avers that b jaxx cannot be comfortably compared to prince because they lack such things as live band interplay or an overarching personal vision.

- i go on to say that jaxx seemingly (in my fantasy head world) responded to that with the "live" sound of certain tracks on kish kash, even though the record is obviously quite far from "live".

- this "anti-naturual" stance is far from revolutionary at this point (though many critics, even sympathetic ones, trot it out as a hobby horse to beat up artists like the jaxx with), but that they manage to avoid being a simple exercise in exposing the hidden wiring of pop music by writing good tunes.

see, peasy.

second: is "that could have been a review of odelay" some sort of oblique diss? i can't remotely fathom it.

S-F J needs to hear 'Fly Life' or 'Jump N Shout' cos the Jaxx have always, well, since they stopped doing crap house, have always had a live , chucked into the mix feel.

in any event, the type of *listening* required for both sb/tlb and kish kash is very similar: selective listening at its finest. the assault/continuous high of the first 3/4s of kish kash is as oppressive as any ross robinson production, which is great for random iPod listening and DJing, but to actually sit through the thing all the way through it takes some serious patience and grit. branes aren't meant to weather that many pheremones in one long stretch (just ask jenna jameson). i adore kish kash, but it wasn't until i started listening to it while rocking out on some ps2 that i could truly ENJOY the thing. finally my attention was somewhat diverted so i could actually REST cuz the damn thing is fucking tiring. i haven't listened to the outkast record since it came out, but i remember it being much the same (ie when i sat down to listen to it, mega-thumbs down; when i shot pool with it on, mega-this is okay, i guess).

okay, that's it, i have to go work. i have to have some way to pay for my internet connection to argue about records i don't really like.

(x-post, yancey basically otm...as a "pop song" [except in the popular consensus sense] "a.d.i.d.a.s." trumps everything outkast released under their own name this year.)

xxxpost

Ah, that's nuts. Both Beck and Basement Jaxx have written a lot of great pop songs. I mean, that's the best reason to like either of them.

Jaxx has written some great pop songs, but I don't think they're on Kish Kash

actually to make that clearer, I think Kish Kash has some cluttered, shitty remixes of great pop songs. not the pop songs themselves.

Not to my ears. I'm talking live as in, 'sounds like the samples were triggered while they were dancing round the desk', rather than 'played on real wooden instruments'. 'Fly Life' the radio edit especially.

Come now, Jess, this is a ridiculous piece of understatement. The first Pere Ubu singles > very nearly EVERYTHING EVER.

My entirely vrai-naif answer is that "ADIDAS" makes me excited and "Ghetto Musick" gives me the ph34r. Or that "ADIDAS" is more stable. I like both of them enormously though so I'm not going to push it.

Oh no, please. Not THAT again.

Er, I was just doing a song quote in response.

(This is where I say that I like both albums though I've heard Kish Kash more.)

Yes, and it's called "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker."

And I'm not sure who or what I'm arguing with/abt here, if anything, but Sun Ra at least seemed to be v. conscious of the American jazz tradition, and his place inside that tradition. I think he might've felt insulted if you'd suggested to him that he stood apart or outside from the music of Ellington, Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Armstrong etc, and right up to the end of his performing career he was playing or referencing the jazz standards of his youth. Plenty of Ra's early albs - "Jazz in Silhouette", "SuperSonic Jazz" - sound mostly like hot, swinging, but in many traditional big band jazz recs (of course in terms of afro-futurism and 'looking ahead', all the cosmic synths and and weirdo time sigs and deep concepts are more obv. relevant to a nominal discussion abt 'today's dance music' - but its only a part of the picture.) Historically, you cld say that Armstrong or Ellington or Charlie Parker 'break' w/ tradition more sharply and mould-breakingly than Ra ever did - that even in the 20s/30s, the transition btween being 'inside' and 'outside' was pretty fast - doesn't Hip-Hop accomodate 'outsiderdom' and 'otherness' - the new weird Amerikka - quicker than just abt any other music?

This statement reminds me of a part in Jon Ronson's book "Adventures with Extremists", where he is in Canada with David Icke, and Canadian left winger accuse Icke (who believes the world is controlled by twelve foot lizards) of being an anti-semite. Anyway Icke's people arrange a meeting with the left wing group and decide to try and highlight Icke's similarity to Noam Chomsky, in terms of political views.

It went something like,

"David Icke's theories on economics and politics are not saying anything Noam Chomsky hasn't said"

The left wing rep replied "Yes but there is a very big difference between David Icke saying it and Noam Chomsky saying it"

"Which is?"

"Well firstly, Noam Chomsky is Jewish, secondly, Noam Chomsky is not mad, thirdly, Noam Chomsky is, in fact, an intellectual, and finally, Noam Chomsky is not an anti-semite".

QED. (fifthly, Simon R called it an overegged pudding and left it at that)

You could also call it "She's Always in My Hair."

no, YOU'RE wrong, because (a) half of Purple Rain and 70% or so of Around the World in a Day and Parade were played by the Revolution, and (b) Sasha was pretty fucking obviously referring specifically to the live "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" being stuck into the hermetic-studio-bound majority of Sign 'O' the Times, because he was talking about Rooty in relation to SOTT in the first place. when in doubt, strip your quote of context and/or make shit up, right?

in short, "interplay" has fuckall to do with (a) his point or (b) his interest in much of anything being discussed.

1) Here is me going all retard over Kish Kash

2) Here is an album I personally felt worked better at what Andre 3000 was trying to do (i.e. felt more natural and cohesive and representative of what said group felt they were able to encompass)

3) Here's a special l'il link for all the Beck hatas

4) Oh let's not drag Interpol through the mud now

I thought it was "forever my Beyonce!" that sucks!

the AllMusicGuide review
Robert Christgau's review

The Love Below is great

Amazing thread.

The Love Below is great

I too will defy the hivemind. Could be a third shorter though.

thread title otm

I for one could never get into Kish Kash. Crazy Itch Radio is the real Jaxx masterpiece.

Bitching about "She Lives in My Lap" because it sounds like "the R&B Mr. Bungle" = most retarded thing I've ever read on ILX.

Five years on, SB/TLB still totally rocks the house. Top ten of the decade for sure.

remarkable challop archeology

hahahaha like tracing the rings of a mighty oak

Prediction: In five years, way more people will still be talking about David Banner's record than the OutKast one. And on the rock side, the Stripes and the Mars Volta will be the long-term survivors.

^^ This guy knows what's up.

hahahaha like tracing the rings of a mighty oak

-- some dude, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 9:37 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

loolol

lol jc chasez when he had contender status.

"Caroline (Caroline!) She's the reason for the world bitch (bitch!)

I hope she's speedingonthewaytotheclubtryingtohurryuptogettosomeballerorsingerorsomebodylikethatandtrytoputonhermakeupinthemirror and CRASH!! CRAAASH!! CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH into a DITCH!! (Just playin'!)"

Better lyrics than anything on "Speakerboxxx": "A.D.I.D.A.S."
Better beats than anything on "The Love Below": "U Know I Love U"

What are these songs?

PITCHFORK GAVE "ROSES" ONE-AND-A-HALF STARS?!?!?!?

WHAT the FUCK!?!?!

"Lyrically, it's just all too ridiulous"?? Even the immortal rhyme, "Caroline (Caroline!) She's the reason for the world bitch (bitch!) I hope she's speedingonthewaytotheclubtryingtohurryuptogettosomeballerorsingerorsomebodylikethatandtrytoputonhermakeupinthemirror and crash, craaaash, craaaaaaash into a ditch!"?

-- Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Monday, March 8, 2004 7:10 PM (3 years ago)

So good I had to post it twice.

To show up 5 years late to the party:

I like both. Took the Love Below a year to grow on me (mostly due to a knee-jerk "WTFingF?!?" since I grew up loving OutKast - ATLiens was the first I heard of them in 5th grade). But it is kinda cheesy. I know where he's going with that and that it's supposed to be, but I can't help thinking one of my favorite rappers went for a Dan Deacon-style record for a bit. And I don't like Dan Deacon.

"right here's the spot" is such DEEP FUNK 4eva

damn, I think ^^^ is my fave jaxx trak

i know you fancy me i FANCY you