The XX

hmm...this is one of those ILX things that sort of fascinate me, like i am totally mystified by the love for this.

Freak.

haha yeah i guess.

they sound like a local band.

xxp I have a very opposite reaction, I think the chick sounds totally cool and the dude is the most dead-sounding person on Earth

"dude you should really come with us friday, our graphic design guy ryan has this band with his girlfriend, they are really cool, really unique, they do a lot cool stuff that mixes rock and more electronica, i totally think you'd dig it, it's really different"

Yeah but your local band would just be doing bad Garbage impressions.

haha Ned otm

hmmm i might take that actually

like i liked what everyone was saying on this thread, and minimalism is dope usually

but i guess to me good minimalism sort of uses the space to suggest something "outside" of what's there, like some sort of magic happens, and it sort of hypnotizes you...but this just seems like...modern rock songs that are unfinished or something.

anyway y'all are digging it and i'm just being a dick so i am over and out.

yeah there's definitely an unfinished-ness about it, that in some songs is just fine or unnoticeable and in others a bit of a drag. unrelatedly they all look really strange and not-how-i-would've-expected, in press photos atleast. where did they put all that attitude when they record this darling little album?

m@tt what do u think of young marble giants?

fwiw i do agree w you to a degree

i kind of think the songs themsevles are pretty hit or miss & theyre getting a lot of love for an aesthetic that is glossing over some so so traXX

think 'shelter' is a banger tho (& yeah the dude's voice sounds totally put-on in an annoying way)

got about half way through the album but i'm afraid to say it hasn't really grabbed me. kind of sounds like the knife, but more deadpan, less european, less melodic and synthy.

In what way does it sound like The Knife?

deadpan vocals, icy drums'n'synths

admittedly i've listened to half the album once, but those were my first impressions.

Are you sure you were listing to The XX and not something completely different?

maybe fever ray?

That's what his description reminded me of as well

I'm not sure 'deadpan' is an adjective I'd ever apply to Karin's vocals either.

i'll go back and listen again... i haven't really got the hang of these slow-lectro groups (chromatics, glass candy). that's more what it reminded me of, but yeah i only gave it a cursory listen so far.

It does actually sound like the Chromatics to be fair.

chromatics are a lot more deliberately blank though - the xx's style is fairly obviously emotional. they're also a lot warmer than the knife.

i like that they're not the sort of band that you'll get after one cursory half-listen.

i'm still a bit wtf @ the lex liking this btw

No, it makes sense if you know The Lex's taste a bit deeper.

No, I mean this sounds like it could go next to the Moderat album on someone's shelf but I'm just surprised he wasn't immediately gung-ho about hating it based on it having guitars in it since it really does sound a lot like the Chromatics and he could barely contain his vitriol over them iirc.

yep and the real mystery is that the dude actually gets paid to write about music

chromatics are alot more melancholic and melodramatic than just "deliberately blank", and if you can't see that the "blankness" is clearly a deliberate part of the xx's mystique, even down to the all black uniforms and sullen photo shoots, then you need to try harder

I didn't like the Chromatics, and I do like the XX. There's some other quality there.

forgive me that burst of vitriol in my first sentence

those who have seen the band live - does drummer dude actually play drums on the pads of his MPC or is it all sequenced?

i just like that they're very quiet a lot of the time. the traded off vocals remind be of the bit at the end of that damien rice song tho :-/

he plays the pads, I think he had a snare and tom too but I was very far back

dude actually gets paid to write about music cos he's good at it: it's not exactly a mystery.

the drummer is super intense! i remember more sequencer-fiddling and button-pressing than hitting pads w/ sticks but he certainly wasn't pressing play and leaving it at that.

yeah well people don't tend to hit mpc pads with sticks, but if you watch the "crystallised" video he's playing the pads with his fingers, thought that would look pretty cool onstage

Not as good as Potter from LOTP's "electronic battle tapping" tho.

Am listening to Chromatics right now, and the problem is - all the sparseness, all the minimalism seems to be leading up to something... that never HAPPENS. The song just meanders off.

With The XX, the HAPPENing may be subtle, but it builds a sense of tension and then relief when it is delivered. The songs have a sense of movement and direction. They feel like they are going somewhere interesting. It can take a few listens to make you realise what is interesting about the HAPPENing - but still, something about the music compells you to listen again until you hear it.

m@tt what do u think of young marble giants?

― BiG HoOs is the one claim!!! (deej), Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:37 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not super familiar but i am listening to them on myspace (YMG) right now.

they seem pretty okay...i can see the comparison to a degree...though i guess this is a lot more charming to me...it's got a certain handmade, eccentric quality to it that is more inviting to me...whereas just the texture of The XX is more dead to me...

I don't know if I'm saying this in the right way, but maybe Young Marble Giants feel like some cool old modern 50s kitchen table you run across at Goodwill, and The XX feels like a sort of stylized knockoff of that style you'd buy new at Target.

yes, one is old and one is new

I don't know if I'm saying this in the right way

yeah i know, but one seems charming to me and one doesn't

i dunno. i don't even LOVE the YMGs the more i listen.

anyway it's not my job to be a rock critic thank god.

actually i'm gonna listen to The XX again, i kinda want to like this, it sounds good on paper.

plus they are from england and seem like they are trying to be a cool band with pretty decent aesthetics and i had to discourage UK from at least trying.

the fact that ppl keep saying them in the same breath as dubstep makes me read all this sub-frequency spacey stuff that maybe isn't them. Aping YMG is pretty risky since Colossolol Youth is pretty unique sounding.

they didn't ape shit, they didn't know YMG until people started saying "hey you sound like YMG"

^i totally believe that. like one time i wrote a guitar riff for practice and it ended up being "uncle tom's cabin" by warrant : (

I don't really buy that, ppl would have said it to them in london after a couple of songs and it would have been self-conscious by then

i dunno, are Young Marble Giants like a way bigger deal in the UK? cuz like i'm a total nerdbait and i dont own any YMG....

if the ppl going to see them were younger kids and shit i could see them having gone a while without it...they probably played for awhile before they got press coverage

Yeah, in the UK YMG are pretty standard issue "obscure stuff I like" for indie fans

The reissue of Collosal Youth a couple of years ago was pretty big and got a lot of mainstream coverage.

YMG are almost totally unknown/forgotten by anyone under the age of 30 who is not a massive indie music geek/Plan B reader type.

What are the chances that a bunch of teenagers who grew up listening to, like, Dubstep and Missy Elliott, had never even heard of YMG, let alone actually heard them to ape them? Pretty fucking good, I'd say.

yeah that's what my gut would say.

plus when you're writing stuff it's so weird the shit that can happen.

like my last band had this riff that we wrote, had had for like a year that was EXACTLY this bloc party riff. someone didn't point it out to me until after our CD was out, i hadn't really checked out bloc party