...and Congratulations Mary!

ilX takin' over!

The BIG takeover. For real. ;-)

Last night, Mary got a big shout out from Jason Trachtenburg for writing such a nice review! Hooray for Mary!

Mary roolz. (I never know what she is talkin' 'bout she sure does sound smart.)

((I lost my "but."))

yay mary! bout yay sean C! too!

Mary I wuv you.

i tried to get the russian futurists into vv, it might happen; hmm. how big a deal is the vv? do you have to be a teacher's pet? ;)

RUSSIAN FUTURISTS in tha Voice NOW!
might? It's Actually Going To Happen?

(sending luv your way dwh)

Yay Mary!

Congratulations!

Congratulations! Marvelous! Yay! Rah! All positive exclamations X100!

"it might happen" = I sent my article on Let's Get Ready to chuck and if it is good enough, y'know, Frank K said to send it but that doesn't mean its good enough; I think it needs editing but it'll probly just get dustbinned; oh well, russian futurists in the voice would be amazing: RF = above reproach! (esp Science of the Seasons) - anyway, sorry Mary, for hijackering! (If the thing gets nowhere near the voice, which it probly won't, I'll send you it paul).

YAY MARY!!!

congratulations, mary! very nice piece - and admirable restraint in sidestepping the obvious partridge family lil drummer girl comparison

big congrats!! off to read this now...

I'm very embarrassed! But thanks everybody!

dwh: I was going to ask if you were writing about Schlovsky; but now I see that C. Eddy might have little use for a piece on 1930s Russian literature, what is this Russian Formalists that you speak of?

haha, no, that'd be far too difficult for me. Err, Russian Futurists = Matthew Adam Hart, canadian candy-pop-hop impresario, secretly lovelorn, recorded in hell, mastered in heaven, kinda dense weird what the hell IS that music, with ploppy beats, Bedingfield for no audience ie big pop in little bedrooms BUT for little audiences NOT big audiences... obv, my fuller piece is a bit more graceful. scifi to thread (that sound accurate enough to you, paul?). also lyric of 2001:

"Stitched and sutured in out fading future... We were young and like science, full of hope and naive defiance" (paraphrase).

Right on, Mary! V. cool.

"We stitched and sutured Ill-fated futures,
Amassed the past in archaic computers
Come join the ranks in our data banks,
It's a life without thanks."

"And we're so new and young like science
Full of ideas and naive defiance."

he's picked up where Magnetic Fields left off - before they went all madrigals and b-way (more like Holiday then), but added a Canadian twist (oh I could have contributed to that thread afterall?) plus teen hip-hop production background.

"Science Of The Seasons", first of his I heard thanx to Uncut, sounds like Gary Numan sings Pet Sounds. Debut album Method Of Modern Love is so lo-fi overdriven in parts (Phil Spector via Casio?) it's just this side of discernable, but has 2 other tracks I luv even more: "Your Big Brown Eyes And My Big Broke Heart", which could give Hank Williams a run for the money, and "Karkarodon Karkarius", a gorgeously twinkling melody that sounds like it came from Ice Caves further north than Mum, but these lyrics:

"I used to love those sandy beaches, the coconut smell of suntan lotion I sailed the sea oh so carefree, I had my fun under the sun. Till teeth and fins invaded, it was something unanticipated, they dragged me in and tore my skin, with missing limbs I tried to swim to sandbars or an island, a feeding frenzy oh so violent those hammerheads turned water red, I was a fool cause they swam in schools and from blue-green into scarlet, fun loving bathers were their target with Sandpaper skins and bloody grins, Horrific size with lifeless eyes. Cut water with your dorsal, I bet I was a tasty morsel, for you to chew and tear in two and leave to die in oceans blue."

twisted pop territory, similar to Magnetic Fields and Wire: pretty tunes hide sinister phrase turns. most of Hart's lyrics r bout luv, though, and new album Let's Get Ready To Crumble! has some heartmelters: absolutely lovely (yer not alone on Penguin Island).

clue: my review mentioned no other artists but Bedingfield and Josef K's "Chance Meeting" that was only cos I was struggling to place the shimmery guitar sound on the 4th?/5th?/6th? song. Apart from that, I mention no lyrics, except one line, and talk about his singing sounding like a hesitant-failure receding hairline and how the sky sometimes forgets itself. overall: successful.

lo-fi overdriven = kinda dense weird what the hell IS that?

I don't see the Magnetic Fields, but I've only heard 69. Casio beach boys, maybe, but I'm lazy to bother with that rubbish.

fave Josef K song

I really like the record, but I'm sort of baffled by what you guys are saying about it: it's not that interesting sounding, is it? I mean, half the time it sounds like the Shins, or something.

You're listening to a different record; we set this staight freako - it's Futurists NOT Formalists.

(anyway, nabitsuh, you're wanted on ile - [Edit -> Find (on This Page) -> "Sunshine".]

clarification: "that interesting" = as interesting as we say OR interesting enough to harp about.

Oh, right: I mean "as interesting as you say." Reading over those comments I would have expected something really fascinating, and while I find the record fascinating and great I don't think it's in the least unprecedented, or anything. It's like, umm, early Stephin Merritt doing Shins songs. Something like that. It's great, though, I certainly don't want to appear to be entirely deflating your praise.

Congrats Mary!

(Ha, sorry, I figured out what it was that was making me wonder about the descriptions above: it's like Kleenex Girl Wonder except really really good, so all the "big pop in little bedrooms" was making me think "oh no it's Graham Smith," which it sort of is, except a lot more special.)

Umm congratulations again, Mary, I bow down at yr feet and such.

who is graham smith?

He's Kleenex Girl Wonder. Russian Futurists still sounds mainly Stephin Merritt, but the whole bedroom-assembled uber-pop process is something I think he shares a lot of with KGW. (For download reference I am thinking mainly of the KGW album Ponyoak.)

in what way does RF sound remotely like SM?

I'm not saying he doesn't, well actually I am. Merritt's voice is deep as a goldfish bowl, his music is, maybe, a little less cluttered than RF's also it is clearer in that RF's sounds like you're too close to your stereo, or your stereo is cheap, often - whereas the SM sound is assured, and quietly clean. Contentually - lovelornness then I suppose, yeah, common point, but I think that just brings SM slightly closer to RF's asymptote, they never fully collide (do any band, you'd say) but I mean collide = become a viable point of ref. But, I could see SM being a good ref if you wanted the person to sense what RF is rather than does.

also: the idea of describing music by way of generic computer game Status Reports, (primarily, Koji Kondo-led Super Nintendo sounds) - C or D?

I disagree! You have to listen to Magnetic Fields's Holiday and the 6th's Wasps' Nest for the period that's similar; it's basically the same sort of process. Oh! And what else it sounds like! Is Portastatic! Which was the side project of Mac McCaughan from Superchunk when he wanted to go off and alternate between sounding like Stephin Merritt and actually covering Stephen Merritt. (Mr. Russian Futurist's voice occasionally sounds like McCaughan's, so I was thinking "but this doesn't sound anything like Superchunk," and then I realized.)

There's a song on Portastatic's The Nature of Sap, called "Hurricane Warning (Ignored)," that could be straight from the RF record. So between that and a Magnetic Fields song like "Strange Powers" and a 6ths song like "All Dressed Up in Dreams" there you sort of have it.

(If you mean in what specific manner do they sound alike it's basically constructing a particular sort of bouncy very-melodic pop from a certain set of relatively low-fi synth sounds and really full arrangements including plenty of "organic" instruments, and a certain type of lyrics and pop vocals placed into that big highly-arranged mix with a ton of space and reverb surrounding them, etc. In other words, this RF record is in some ways a lot like what Merritt sounded like during I guess 93-95. I really like it, though, I think it's incredibly well-written, and I don't even think the sound is that big of a thing about it: it strikes me as very good and very rich music, and in a way that's really appropriate for presenting in the sort of bedroom-pop mold he's using.)

note: I have only heard 69 Love Songs and am taking this as my Merritt.

*looks sideways* YAY MARY!

(pssst, Nitsuh, if I sent it, would you read it, my words on RF, and constructively beat it up). (nicely). (email me yr address here if so.

Mary:

dwh - you haven't heard Holiday? (in for a treat!)

Yeah, Holiday is megafab.

b-b-but this is not the first time mary has been published in the voice!! what about this?!!

yay