let us talk about xinlisupreme

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... before jess' ego swells out of control!!!

I need to give it another coupla listen to say precisely why, but I'll say this for now: it's not as good as I so very much want it to be, especially in the context of this year's other releases.

but what do YOU think???

ps I saw donnie darko today! is good!

bob zemko, Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:24 (twenty-two years ago) link

yes, please talk about it, i have no idea whatsoever what it is!

ron (ron), Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:32 (twenty-two years ago) link

eep - I am unclear: I don't mean that the quality of this year's ish has shown xinli up, rather xinli's vision feels all the more exciting and vital in the current barren climate and thus i want to give em a critical break cos it's still better than listening to a microsecond of wilco

bob zemko, Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:33 (twenty-two years ago) link

eep - I am unclear: I don't mean that the quality of this year's ish has shown xinli up, rather xinli's vision feels all the more exciting and vital in the current barren climate and thus i want to give em a critical break cos it's still better than listening to a microsecond of wilco

heh, unsurprisingly i agree with bob. last year i'm not sure i would have rated xinli quite so high; this year, however, everytime i put the record on it's like having a colonic for my skull...cleans ya out, see.

ron, i'm working on a review of it - however slowly - for freakytrigger, but basically, it's two(?...i dont have my notes nearby) guys from osaka who expand the mbv/jesus&marychain template via more noize, big stoopid chords blown macy's day parade size with feedback, tone washes, drift, occasionally leaden digi-beats. it's good.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:42 (twenty-two years ago) link

hah, that makes it sound kinda blah, actually. here's what i said about the single on nylpm back in may.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 15:44 (twenty-two years ago) link

it IS good but there's something missing at "its heart"... it's not even what i said before about "merely in today's context" cos based on what i like I OUGHT TO LOVE THIS RECORD WHENEVER.

or is this my latent rockism glaring at xinli's bubblegum pop sprinkles and deeming it somehow unfinished? but then just cos it's ephemera doesn't mean that it can't satisfy; quite the opposite really

anyways i'll give it a listen before I bore myself a deeper hole than i'm already in

bob zemko, Saturday, 24 August 2002 16:30 (twenty-two years ago) link

the guy from the wire brought up something good in his review re. xinli vs., say, black rebel motorcycle club who have "the iconographic posturing down but none of [the mary chain's] wayward oceanic depth", which xinli have in spades apparently. he didn't go far enough however, because - maybe too often during the xinli record - they lack any sort of iconographic posturing, really any sense at all that this was made by two humans rather than just leaving the machines to it. i've got no problem with total machine noise (although i don't really listen to it) and i've got no problem with iconographic posturing (is one of the ingredients for good pop, surely)...what makes xinli simultaneously disappointing and exciting is that they've suggested a slight new rip in the divide between the two, another bit of exploration in an area which looked depleted previously. it's just a little too abstract sometimes. i have a feeling they have an even better record in them, if they let a little more of themselves in.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 17:07 (twenty-two years ago) link

thematically, if not stylistically, i'd compare tomorrow to something like tool's lateralus, a great big noise, seemingly outwardly directed, which is actually all about hiding within, losing yourself.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 17:09 (twenty-two years ago) link

i wouldn't go so far as to say there was a total lack of posturing with xinli; i am very shaky on my background so i can't comment on yr tool comparison but if we're going along with the hype for a sec I'd look to MBV as an example of total icon abscence (tho k.shields paradoxically achieved this status in rockland anyway as some sort of mad boffin prof). possibly the difference here is to do with their being japanese, which is a slightly um daffier? at least humbler kind of posturing than the classic black rebel, jesus mary chain shtick. I accept that it's terribly cliche, but when i think xinli i imagine the wilful joyful ABUSE of machinery by this boy/girl bubblegum kid combo.

HOWEVER i do think we're on the right track as regards some sort of problematic engagement with rock tenets and especially with the equation with the kind of bands we've talked about so far, which is basically stickered on the CD cover when you buy it. Moreover because this created lineage was a huge factor in me being drawn to xinli in the first place.

bob zemko, Saturday, 24 August 2002 17:58 (twenty-two years ago) link

side note: i wanted to write "viz" in there at some point but realised that the word is the sole property of mark s now!!

bob zemko, Saturday, 24 August 2002 18:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

very rough notes from the review:

writing about christian fennesz in wire, d. toop: "one of the answers to that question might be the jesus & mary chain similarly engaged in quite another era by the sisyphean task of burying brian wilsons piano in the legendary sandpit without totally obscuring it's radiance."

tempting to say the same thing about xinli, given the frothing mary chain comparisons; unlike fennesz's "atmospheric distress", xinli doesn't make me flash on rippling sunlight on moving water or wind blowing through leaves. i don't quite buy the mary chain example, either, because - unlike tom in his 21 singles review - i never saw the earliest phase of jamc as "gray". there's very little of that same exuberant, idiot energy in xinli, of two kids playing 40 minutes of feedback because they're not quite sure what a "real" band is supposed to do. if it owes anything to brian wilson at all it's the sound of the amber of his little symphonies cracked and spoiled and demanding remittance for being awoken like urishima taro from the turtle palace, instantly aged by their exposure to the air of our real world. the sun setting on the endless summer, etc etc, cliche cliche. or maybe having already set, with storm clouds hovering. storm clouds can be beautiful too, of course, as can storms themselves.

i just realized that "all you need is love was not true" sounds like sigur ros remixed by thomas koner and keiji haino.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 18:23 (twenty-two years ago) link

heh, and not that i mind, because i like bob and he's making me think about it, but we can't be the only two people to have heard this record.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 18:24 (twenty-two years ago) link

marcello also brought up a good comparison with ed rush on his blog. even when the beats don't sound like techstep, there's the same claustrophobia - the filling of the whole sound spectrum, so that even the drop outs and silences seems faintly opressive - of a virus 12".

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 18:26 (twenty-two years ago) link

i think the japanese thing is a red herring, too, because i really don't think xinli would have fit so well on, say, cosmic kurushi monsters or a tokyo flashback or shock city shockers. there is a very british strain - which i don't think is so much invented by the media as picked up on - running through their work, which might explain why they're on fat cat and not psf. there's no pigfucking - that i can hear - in xinli noize, and it's curiously asexual to boot. (not "neutered" because that's a gender-determined value judgement...there was "real mans rock" here at one point, blah.) there is posturing, of a sort yeah, but i don't hear any willful wackiness (cf. boredoms and offshoots) or garage shlock (cf. guitar wolf, teengenerate, etc.) at the same time, i'm not 100% convinced that yeah, they really "mean it"...it's a pretty "bleak" album, whereas i've rarely encountered japanese music (at least japanese rock) that wasn't cut on some level with a bit of ridiculousness. (maybe the heavy handedness of the titles?) (it's a bit like how the most melodramatic manga will have bizarre sight gags at inopportune moments.)

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 19:03 (twenty-two years ago) link

just wondrin is the sound quality supposed to b really trebly, slightly hissy and shit?

naked as sin, Saturday, 24 August 2002 20:24 (twenty-two years ago) link

yes.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 21:56 (twenty-two years ago) link

On track one there's a fantastic bit where they sound like Carter USM!!

It's a better album than Loveless.

Tom (Groke), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:08 (twenty-two years ago) link

On track one there's a fantastic bit where they sound like Carter USM!!

Or Andrew WK (same difference)

Tom (Groke), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:08 (twenty-two years ago) link

heh, which track tom?

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:29 (twenty-two years ago) link

Track one dude! "Kyoro" I think, about halfway through, where they suddenly go into drum machine rhythms and pop chords. The rest of it is good too!

Tom (Groke), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:30 (twenty-two years ago) link

i thought so. hah, that's my least favorite track! god, i'm getting so anti-pop this year. i really do love that nelly song!

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:39 (twenty-two years ago) link

I bet you like the atrocious indie ones! (That one - 10 or 11 - where they try to do a 'proper song' or something and it sounds like Chapterhouse!)

Tom (Groke), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:46 (twenty-two years ago) link

you sure are fond of the exclamation points tonite, you drunkard.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:49 (twenty-two years ago) link

wait:

;-)

there.

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 24 August 2002 22:49 (twenty-two years ago) link

woah, dude! jess, you're analyzing this on some next-level type shit, and here i am just trying to figure out what the heck i'm listening to!! ;-) i don't know if i've downloaded the same musics you're talking about. i've got a song here called 'amarylli'

ron (ron), Sunday, 25 August 2002 00:51 (twenty-two years ago) link

oh, ok now i'm listening to 'fatal sisters...' and i hear the guitar wash-out...

ron (ron), Sunday, 25 August 2002 00:54 (twenty-two years ago) link

heh, i just realized in rereading that tom said it was track one in his original post. i, of course, blame the noise.

jess (dubplatestyle), Sunday, 25 August 2002 01:04 (twenty-two years ago) link

I just went out and bought this based on the bands mentioned in reviews. First two tracks didn't impress, sounded like JAMC with a shit drum machine and digital echo. Standout tracks, anyone? I'm gonna listen to the rest on my stereo (maybe that'll be better than my walkman) and get back later.

paul b, Sunday, 25 August 2002 01:55 (twenty-two years ago) link

It's a better album than Loveless.

Between that and the WK comment, you're out to induce a heart attack in me, aren't you? I think I have this around on mp3, perhaps I shall give it an ear tonight (the backlog is just too large these days...).

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 25 August 2002 02:23 (twenty-two years ago) link

"just wondrin is the sound quality supposed to b really trebly, slightly hissy and shit?"
This brings back memories of when I taped "isn't anything" and "psychocandy" for a high school girlfriend.
"I think there's something wrong with the cassette you gave me..."
I'm not feeling this so much, maybe it's for people who like everything about the above two records except the songs. I like pop with my noise. I have this problem where I buy everything with MBV mentioned in the review. Not one has come anywhere near.

paul b, Sunday, 25 August 2002 02:37 (twenty-two years ago) link

"(That one - 10 or 11 - where they try to do a 'proper song' or something and it sounds like Chapterhouse!)"

Tom, you say this like it's a bad thing...

Clarke B. (emily), Sunday, 25 August 2002 02:56 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yes, what Clarke said. I was too bemused by the other comments to immediately follow up on that one.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 25 August 2002 03:32 (twenty-two years ago) link

Xinlisupreme = better than Interpol but less good than the new Scarface record.

adam, Sunday, 25 August 2002 22:01 (twenty-two years ago) link

two weeks pass...
new xinli- murder license EP out early october. has a corroded US flag on the cover very interestingly!

i can't remember why i left this thread alone now. oh well.

i might've overstepped the mark re wilful joyful bubblegum abuse but i don't doubt their sincerity at all, much for the same reasons as jess mentions above; it's like a po-faced melodrama. i think their (and maybe japanese) faintly ridiculuous yet totally enlivening sincerity is what counts here no matter its form. now re asexuality I was mulling this over for a while and without going too far into cultural cliche what japanese music have you heard has been sexual? or rather: we're blundering here by judging them on our Western idea of sexuality and thus "posturing"; hence the lack of (grunt) satisfaction. japanese noize has NEVER been pigfuck noize: it's always been more balanced, preciously so almost in a kind of mindful zen. (think back to that Merzbow interview in the wire) it's a balance of sexuality too: a far more feminine intuitive, tidal enveloping as opposed to western maledom punctum penetration, what reynolds/press called "the oceanic imaginary". i think it was them anyway. even in boredoms bubbleburst there isn't maybe the austere contemplative zen but the mischievous shlocky referencing and awareness of recontextualisation is a far more feminine, open thing than the usual rock influence/crossreferencing. this got me wondering abt what jess saw as their britishness; i'd stick on englishness, if that even exists anymore. and tho i hadn't yet read that other thread I'm thinking there's something there in common, romantically maybe in the idea of the classical effete english gentleman but still in the blood somewhere. collective diffidence, restraint, rigorous awareness. look at the cover: pink blossom between bloom and shivel on white card, fey charcoal cursive moil on the back, creeping onto the spine.

bob zemko (bob), Thursday, 12 September 2002 21:43 (twenty-two years ago) link

(sux teeth) that's some rass claat posting!

bob zemko (bob), Thursday, 12 September 2002 21:45 (twenty-two years ago) link

two weeks pass...
christ! (»newbie alert«) a msgboard where people don't go "uhh?" at the mention of xinli!

can i just categorically say that i love, worship and adore this band. even if i do know precisely f-ck all about them. got 'tomorrow never comes' online after seeing a few intriguing reviews. currently hunting down any and all info i can find about them, just ordered their new EP and their "all you need is love was not true" single on opalmusic [am i gonna get an email a week from now telling me that's out of stock?]

to the person who said "It's a better album than Loveless": YES.

to me, it sounds like a couple of people doing surreptitious and covert things in a cave off the coast of japan somewhere. at 2am. this is a gooooood thing. d'ya think there's any chance that they'll come to the uk anytime soon? would like to see what they do live/interview them.

Gen

gen w, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 13:24 (twenty-two years ago) link

i read somewhere they've been refusing all manner of highprofile gigs

bob zemko (bob), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 17:07 (twenty-two years ago) link

This is my favourite album so far this year, but I have no idea why. I'm not a huge fan of MBV, and if you were to say "Like them, but japanese metal!", I wouldn't be much impressed. But I love 'em. Right now I'm realising that All You Need Is Love Is Not True is the sound of lying in bed on a Saturday morning and occasionally breaking out a Big Stretch then going back to lying in.

Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 8 October 2002 10:10 (twenty-two years ago) link

my god i thought this album was SHIT and i still believe it so. like a 3rd rate Orange Crush tribute band is how a friend of mine described them and i don't think he was wrong. get a grip!!!!! so it's japanese, it's on fat cat. neither of those should serve as a recommendation (just think - optical 8 were japanese - SHIT. fat cat put out that last david grubbs record SHIT).
i just don't understand how anyone can like this record

bob snoom, Tuesday, 8 October 2002 16:27 (twenty-two years ago) link

well no one said they were recommendations, and if anything the fatcat thing put me off as well. so what exactly don't you like about them then? (dunno abt orange krush)

bob zemko (bob), Tuesday, 8 October 2002 17:08 (twenty-two years ago) link

i was actually somewhat persuaded by bob snoom's strong language UNTIL the Grubbs diss... I'll be checking out the full-length very shortly.

gygax!, Tuesday, 8 October 2002 17:36 (twenty-two years ago) link

seven months pass...
tomorrow never comes has soundtracked my (haha) corrosion over the past week or so. was murder license any good?

Ess Kay (esskay), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 18:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

I didn't like Murder License as much but then I am big wuss who prefers pictures of flowers to smears of blood. It may yet Grow On Me.

Alex in Rotherham (Alex in Doncaster), Wednesday, 21 May 2003 10:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

one month passes...
'Anyway Oscar relented and let me come in, packed away his current, unsavoury, little friend and got down to business. Or up to business, one never quite knows with enemas... Both, I suppose. I asked him for a stronger solution than we'd used before, because these things always have to escalate: that's their nature, it can't be helped. And he obliged me... But he wanted an increase in payment - for the general inconvenience and the lateness of the hour.' His eyes widened and, for a moment, he looked almost painfully childlike and, somehow, surprised or disappointed.

'See?' J.D. opened his mouth, yawned at it wide, exposing the naked line of his gums. Barring his incisors, all Jack's teeth were gone. His multiple extractions had left their mark in ruddy puckers, a black fraying of stitches - Nathan hoped from hospital intervention - and the unpleasant dark of what might be either clots, or unhealed sockets, Nathan didn't wish to guess. His own mouth began to wash with anxious saliva.

'Christ, Jack, what were you thinking?'

'That I no longer wished to think. Besides which, it wasn't bad, didn't even especially go wrong. I had an entirely satisfactory dip into oblivion and then I was sent on my way. The sending on the way, that was the problem. Old Oscar was a little to anxious to see me go. Which unfortunately left me to provide one of the West End's more lurid pavement spectacles...'

Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 July 2003 21:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

ten months pass...
This is pretty dope.

Be sure to Loop! Loop, Loop, Loop. (ex machina), Thursday, 27 May 2004 12:41 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...
I didn't see any threads on the "Neinfuturer" web album they put out late last year and wondered what people thought of it. I've been enjoying it greatly - it's a good head clearer as it blows out the dust and then helps to refocus.

EZ Snappin (afka Erik the Mainer) (EZSnappin), Thursday, 16 February 2006 14:01 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah, xinlisupreme is fucking hot as shit. Best band I've heard in a while.

all the roads was wet..., Thursday, 16 February 2006 18:23 (nineteen years ago) link

ok. got some questions on this no future or neinfuterer:
which tracks are on it?

album info at webpage reads:
01 All You Need Is Love Was Not True
02 Virus Dance
03 Murder License
04 I Drew A Picture Of My Lungs
05 I Am A New Christ
06 Soprano Meditation
07 A Golden Journey
08 Tokyo Moon
09 Roppongi Woman / Amallylis
10 Zouave`s Blue
11 New Christ [Usagi-tobi MIX]
12 In A Silent Doll

...but not all of those songs are available for download, yet they are all listed at the "podcast trackback" as released

discography at webpage reads:
01 All You Need Is Love Was Not True
02 Murder License
03 I Am A New Christ
04 Soprano Meditation
05 A Golden Journey
06 Tokyo Moon
07 Amallylis
08 Zouave's Blue
09 New Christ [Usagi-tobi MIX]
10 In A Silent Doll

...and those are still available for download

there are two other songs at that page, namely namelesssong and b-session, are those the two missing ones?

yet i am wondering if i should take this serious at all, but, hey, i'm curious.

b0ring, Monday, 27 February 2006 11:56 (eighteen years ago) link

six years pass...

As a new companion
XINLISUPREME to participate in Virgin Babylon Records has been decided.

Music was announced on the official site for the first time in five years last year in 2010
"Seaside Voice Guitar"
That intense sound, such as a snowstorm, or a splash of light particles and waves.
And it looks beautiful in the world behind it is overwhelming.
Since the spring of 2011, the most sound in the hearts of their own,
Music was sounded in the world you want.

(Start of high-quality version free download wav, mp3 at today) "Seaside Voice Guitar"
Let's wait to look forward to receiving both a new sound while listening to XINLISUPREME.

world's end girlfriend (Virgin Babylon Records)

navihchkan (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 12:21 (twelve years ago) link

three years pass...
one month passes...

nice to see these lads back

Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 7 September 2015 23:50 (nine years ago) link


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