Octo Octa &c

Freed From Desire did indeed happen on the stream, at which point I turned it off for a while, so maybe I missed Out of Space, which I am still fine with ftr

(I acknowledge that being OK with one and not the other merely underlines that I am from the very end of that 30-something aux cable bracket)

anyway it was fun & good vibes, as mh said

I mean I absolutely don't have a problem with pop-house bangers, just confused by the seeming narrative constructed around them of being singular visionaries etc if that's what they do when you can go any high street club and expect to hear similar.

I mean rather that than Raving Disco Breaks mix which I didn't get at all, the slowdown in tempo just killed any sense of kinetic energy it had for me

where is this singular visionaries thing coming from?

seeing a lot of praise for them across the board here and in all the usual places - RA, FACT, etc

it's not that I think this stuff is bad - some of Resonant Body is decent but it really trails off for me and it's not massively memorable, and yet the way they're talked about feels reminiscent of Villalobos in the noughties or whatever

should probably have posted in the music-you-don't-get-thread I guess!

i love villalobos too tbh!

oh I love Villalobos too - I mean more the *way* they're being written about, the measure of enthusiasm seems much higher and broader than dance acts usually get

praising form and content vs. praising form and context imo

or rather, for the octo octa stuff, maybe content and context without broad innovations in form

thought better of my parallelism there

of course, context is vital part of understanding the content of this: queer struggles and dancefloor utopia are a huge part of dance music culture, I just wish the music itself was stronger

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"raving disco breaks" was the shit tho

in general i agree that the hype is outpacing the music in this case

but that's always already the case with whatever is currently
popular w the dance music press

(shrug) idk, i don't actually know shit about dance music, maybe there are tens of thousands of other djs who play good music, maybe i'm primarily interested in their music because i am directly and explicitly their target audience. when they dj, it's the best dance music i've heard, it speaks to trans experience like no other music i've never heard, it's intense and powerful and affecting like nothing else i've ever heard. if that makes me street team, fine.

they're really good

like, i'm not usually personally invested in the music i listen to the way for instance imago gets. if you want to talk shit about robert wyatt and be, like, "well i don't know what makes what he does any better than richard sinclair", no skin off my nose

but for me, the way i feel about octo octa's music is inextricable from my lived experience as a transgender woman. you don't get it? fine. just, you know, maybe use a little more sensitivity in how you express that, because it's really easy for me to read a lot of things into that expression that are dismissive of that lived experience, which i'm certain you're not intending to do.

I don't mean my criticisms to come off as dismissive of trans experience and I feel terrible that you would interpret it as such, apologies rush

thank you!

I don't come to this music for the reason I come to, like, Objekt or something but I sure saw both Objekt and OO/ED at the same festival!

I hoped that a full rip would surface - I missed the first 30 mins or so and didn't think it had worked at all, but in fact I got the last 3 hours. It's a bit big for me to upload uncompressed (2.8gb) but if anyone wants the video and has a preferred reasonable bitrate I'm happy to convert when I get some time.

In the meantime I made a V0 mp3, send me your email through ilx webmail if you want a link.

The YouTube video is working again, the first minute has been muted to resolve the copyright issue

Also, new Octo Octa mixtape on Bandcamp

https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/album/love-hypnosis-vol-1-2

oh rock on, i'm glad they got it working!

also glad i could actually buy this physical... i suspect it'll sell out quick...

have spent some more time thinking about this thread. i feel a lot of guilt whenever i pull out the "lived experience" card, not that i wasn't honest about it because i was, but i try not to do it lightly and i try to adequately explain it whenever i to. and i'm not sure i did.

i feel like i have this issue relating critically to a lot of creative work. i experience it in a context that is fundamentally different from how other people experience it. the temptation is to say that one context is more important than the other, but i don't think that's true. it's just hard to reach that state of irreconcilability.

i've quit watching doctor who completely because of the way the people on the doctor who thread approach the show. i don't think that's what any of the posters there want. i also don't think any of the posters there are wrong in their fundamental approach! chris chibnall is a hack writer who writes stories that work on a superficial level and still have lots of plot holes and incongruities. what was frustrating to me though is that i saw something _else_ in the show, something that was more important to me than his shit writing, something that rendered his shit writing completely irrelevant to me. and i couldn't explain to anybody else on the thread what it was i saw, why it was watching the show invigorated me so much, and every time i watched the show i wanted to talk about how much i loved it, and everybody else was talking about how shit it was, and it was so demoralizing i gave up.

anyway, i don't _know_ if octo octa and eris drew are anything better than mediocre as house music djs. i think they're pretty damn good myself, but i don't know any of the songs they're playing, have never heard them before, don't know how any of the other people do it. i know a little bit about house music, but i don't know nearly as much about it as i do about, say, prog rock, or about doctor who.

or about being trans. i can't talk about their music without talking about being trans, because they're both extremely clear about what it is they're trying to do and why they're trying to do it. and i can't speak for anybody else, trans or otherwise, but i can say, with reasonable certainty, that i understand pretty well what they're trying to do, and that they are exceptionally good at it.

i get annoyed at hyperbolic praise myself. we've all had a good laugh at the garden state "the shins will change your life" bullshit, i mean seriously the fucking _shins_? on the other hand, fuck it, the shins probably did change someone's life, right? probably made as much difference to theirs as octo octa and eris drew have made to mine. someone, somewhere, saw a shins concert and just cried for three days straight and came to some hard understandings about their life that they didn't have the words to explain. and it doesn't make the shins not a mediocre indie band, and it doesn't invalidate their lived experience for me to think of the shins as a mediocre indie band.

Thank you for writing that wonderful post.

Thanks Kate, and I’m glad you managed to get a copy of the tape!

lol the shins

Aww, thank you y'all.

this mix is fucking excellent

btw Kate (and everyone else) this art of the DJ on RA with Eris is really great:

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3352

this is incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ef_mtKA12g

Awesome

She's on The Residency now btw

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nw0m

Quazar! <3

https://www.thefader.com/2020/11/18/octo-octa-river-premiere?utm_source=tftw

On streaming services now too.

I will honestly say that I didn't "get" the most recent album until a month or so ago, when one of the tracks came on while I was driving and I straight up had an excellent dance party in my car. Went home and listened and danced to the whole thing, love OO now!

Oh shiiiiiiiiit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLGG4fYpdBo

this is a banger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ef_mtKA12g

posted by map a week ago!

tim f alerted me to it ftr

I will honestly say that I didn't "get" the most recent album until a month or so ago, when one of the tracks came on while I was driving and I straight up had an excellent dance party in my car. Went home and listened and danced to the whole thing, love OO now!

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Friday, November 20, 2020 12:22 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

awright! that album is evergreen, probably in my top ten of the decade. she is just so fucking great i can hardly believe it.

River is also dope. i'm looking forward to an end of year release hopefully? Anybody know anything?

"River" is from their Fabric mix out this Friday

coolio, thanks!

so unsurprisingly this Fabric mix is pretty banging

listening now, coincidentally, and yes! the first section is fairly high octane house with the occasional break thrown in, I think it will get more ravey...

Interesting how specifically London the opening section feels, and parts of the final third as well, but with this very soft gooey melodic centre. I'm sure that's intentional, but it's absolutely not the version of London that's especially fashionable right now, there's a real Basement Jaxx vibe to some of it (by which I mean the late 90s Brixton club night).

Absolutely riotous and joyous throughout obviously.

🤘

Got a new project with @octo_octa called @Alchem_Sisters. Our first remix is out today of the amazing New Orleans-based punk band Special Interest. The song is called "Disco III" and the remix is punk, acid, breaks, big beat, & psychedelic chaos. https://t.co/SYviPNfqOi

— 🍄 Eris Drew 🍄 (@ErisDrew) January 8, 2021

well that's pretty good