Neu! Trans Am

May the internet drown the world with exposure.


Just a few months ago, I was thinking that Trans Am's Sex Change was a tasty little mercury groove, rolling its metallic lustre through crevasses and pipelines while driving with what felt like a perfectly balanced miniscus. This was Thrill Jockey, the electronic psych-in-my-synthesizer label of the nineties, circa 2006.

Well, here's to balancing musical vectors with historical embarkation.

Expanding on my relatively short lived Kraut rock awareness spearheaded by my fascination with Can's Ege Bamyasi , I went on to discover Neu!. While the boy's post-Kraftwerk self-titled debut flies between gleaming smooth swiftness and a vicious dose of plexi-disassembly, the opening track may have well been "4,738 Regrets" 35 years later. Considering that amounts to 13 years at one regret a day, I wonder who they were mimicking in 1994. Signs point to Tortoise .


Neu! - Hallogallo [from Neu! , 1972]
Trans Am - 4,738 Regrets [from Sex Change , 2006]

As for Lieber Honig, the last song on Neu!, 1972 - it could be Kria Brekkan as a man, a few jaded steps left from of completely angelic.

I'm losing face.

-Tara

Yeasayer Ease the Move East

Yes, I'm abandoning this little island town in a few silver flecks beyond the three month mark.

WTF? Oh, definitely.

Thankfully, to bridge my headspace between East and West, Yeasayer have come along with works of resplendent harmonizing, an oasis heavy glow, and a galloping army of majestic strength.

They also gave hats off to Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn in their band influences.

Their songs are both delicate and purposeful, graceful and sturdy. By the end of 2080, it sounds like they've convinced all the kids in the kampung that singing along is more fun than riding three to a bicycle. I say snake eyes.

Yeasayer - 2080
Yeasayer - Final Path

The album is being released on NY label Monitor, the same label that put out Indian Jewelry's album last year, which hexed me in a similar manner. So far, the release date is TBA circa the fall, meaning it will presumably come out subsequent to my flight across the great blue ocean. At least they have hot towelettes on the airplane.

[MySpace]

-Tara

Steve Reich vs. LCD Soundsystem

I spent a lot of time in resorts as a kid. During my weakest moments of socialization, my mother would scan the pool to find a child to satisfy my distraction for the forthcoming days; meaning any kid my age (plus or minus three years) whom was yet to be befriended. After that it was imminent enrollment in the crafts club; stuck inside the vortex of the kid’s Club Med nightmare, powerless to escape, making lady bugs out of paper.

But I should be empathetic - her naivete is no worse than me comparing Steve Reich to LCD Soundsystem . I realize these two songs merely share one shallow characteristic: stacatto piano cycles. Don’t try to shoot me down with the vocal approaches - I know choral coos and willfull proclamations are not one in the same.

Yet, somehow "You Are Whoever Your Thoughts Are" had me reminiscing about “All My Friends”.

LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
[website]

Steve Reich - You Are Wherever Your Thoughts Are
[website]

So in defense of Reich: he is fleeting with the same urgency as the composer's of the Baroque era, working instead with a haunting and persisting minimalism that is steadily detering a soft and quiescent electronic apocolypse.

And LCD? The romance of hedonism traveling a metropolis with a heavy head of accusations. "North American Scum” clearly is the post-modern response to Bowie's "Young Americans."

If this were a mash-up, it would start with Reich at 3:40. But I'm still stuck on which song is snow falling on cedars and which is the settling of nuclear fallout.

-Tara