Podcast
Rumpus Events
Rumpus Book ClubSWINGING MODERN SOUNDS #22: Son of Interactive Playlist
*Kid Millions, Man Forever (Brah)*
Readers of the fine print will recall an amendment to my piece about Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which appears at the end of the comments section there, in which I spoke about recently having seen a performance of that piece rescored for chamber ensemble. The next night, by chance, I then went to hear Oneida, the venerable Brooklyn band play. Three sets, mostly improvised. The similarities in style and affect were not lost on me, and so I was unsurprised to learn that Kid Millions, the drummer for Oneida, had also just seen the Metal Machine Music concert up at Columbia. Just as I was, Kid Millions was powerfully moved by the extremity and ambition of the rescored Reed piece, whose miracle was not only in its shocking loudness (earplugs at the door), but the sheer implausibility of the whole—just arranging the piece was a miracle, and this was reinforced by beholding the demanding playing involved. Kid then returned to the 
Ocropolis, the studio where Oneida records in Williamsburg, and got down to thinking about what he could record in response. A response of the valedictory sort. The result is a new piece, Man Forever, which will be released in early summer (on Oneida’s label, Brah, which is distributed by the excellent Jagjaguwar), and which essentially comes in two sides (like an old fashioned vinyl album, which I believe is how it’s going to be released: as lp and as download), entitled “Man Forever Part One,” and “Man Forever Part Two,” each side basically an entire piece scored for multiple drummers and some electric something or other, some swamp noise, some freight trains, some BQE, some electric guitar, squawling in the rear. The drumming is not, I should point out, at all groove-related. On the contrary, Kid seems to have attempted to come up with the hardest possible thing to play, which is a sequence of rolls. The drumming is so graceful and post-rock-ish that it really resembles that strange mid-sixties period of free jazz wherein people went way beyond what was previously likely or feasible and made up some shit, notwithstanding Mingus’s comment that “you have to have something to solo over.” Millions does not need something to solo over, he just goes, and the electric something-or-other (let’s say it’s guitar feedback and that is part of the hommage to Lou Reed) is merely a description of some of what the drums area already doing, instead of vice versa, which means that the drums are the lead instrument in this valedictory, and the guitar is the sound bed on which the drums take place. It’s a crowded and serious piece, that much should be obvious, but you kind of settle in with it and it feels somehow gentle (in a way that Metal Machine Music never does), somehow possessed of a lightness, despite its physical requirements, which must have been overwhelming, and when side one gives out, with some three minutes remaining, and the sound of cymbals is repurposed with tape effects or software improvements, it’s a relief, it’s a residue of physicality, it’s the forever part of “Man Forever,” at least for three minutes, because there has to be a little dynamic variation, because what happens if there is no dynamic variation, because what is the form that has no dynamic variation, “side two” opens with even more air, the rolls even more African, even more Elvin Jones, and there’s real space in the kit, as if taking off from the breakdown of the wall of provocation at the end of “side one,” and at least initially the electric squawls are just shimmering in the rear of the piece, like some echo of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s late seventies remixes; indeed, there’s a bit of dub reggae to the piece at the opening of “side two,” but it then moves into a condition of reprise, sounding a bit more like “side one,” as it develops, into a slightly increased diet of noise, unto its close after some fifteen or sixteen minutes. What does it all mean? It means that noise is still possible, and that the younger players have not, despite the sediment of history, missed out on the lessons of the minimalist era, and that the younger players are still hearing something in those sonic possibilities. They are hearing what came before, and they are finding ways to make it work in a vocabulary that is familiar to them, and in this case that means that guitar feedback (which, it’s fair to say, is now a feature of nearly any recording that features an electric guitar) is replaced with drum rolls, which are themselves a reaction against the rigid four to the floor of so much pop music these days. Kid Millions, who, as drummer, is unsurpassed in his generation, finds an opportunity with slippery polyrhythmical approaches here, as if to say that the human drummer is the thing that is most controversial in the age of the click track, so there’s no pulse, no melodic home, no melody at all, really, just the thunderous ebbing and flowing of multiple rolls and fills, to replace the massaged rhythmic pulse of the Pro Tools era. It’s a provocation, yes, and a welcome one. And with the provocation comes a fair amount of dizzy joy, and a ritualized release of dammed-up energy. As with the original Metal Machine Music. Only more so.
And here’s a video of a piece by Gyorgy Ligeti from his brief Fluxus period, in which a hundred metronomes wind down. It’s about eight minutes long. Starts out like the worst racket you ever heard in your life and becomes more sublime as the machines begin to stop. Maybe because it’s satisfying when people stop using metronomes. This is a punctuation mark on a discussion of rhythm that has been ongoing, in my own heart and imagination, for more than year now, and it indicates what is best about the music made by machines: it is best when the machines reveal their frailties, and behave more like humans. It’s best when the machines stop being machines.
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May 7th, 2010 at 6:17 am
Fred Thomas does in fact exist and is an advocate and inhabitant of ypsilanti, Michigan! He has a history of being involved in many bands such as his name is alive, lovesick, saturday looks good to me, city center, as well as great releases under his own name. Rainbro also exists, and is from beautiful providence, Rhode Island. Discoveries! New Sounds! And that Higgs release, the “devotional songs”, in my opinion is the best of his solo material so far, save the “magic alphabet” album of mouth harp pieces.
May 7th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Rick,
Thanks so much for this very thoughtful review of Clogs. The story of why their chose songs for their new album is fairly separate from their connection to The National. (The music was actually written by Padma on a fellowship to a kind of artists’ retreat in Italy 3 or 4 years ago & I’d credit the change of scenery for the change in format more than anything else; Stick Music is, to my ears, very much an album resulting from a country man forced to live in urban areas, and a reaction to exposure to both urban avant-gardes and “progressive” academic music circles.) Regardless of quibbles it’s nice to read you going on at length about them. The opportunities to read music criticism that is anything but an extension of the publicity machine is too rare these days — and you’ve been such a great long-haul advocate for Clogs.
Also, YESSSS to Daniel Higgs. “Not for everyone,” I guess but insanely underrated & bracing. I like this performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjWjV4rUv98
- Alec
May 7th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Dearest Rick
I was very happy to see you again, the Stone. The place was filled with old friends from around the world, very willing to play along, what a delight!
A little clarification:
Die Knodel were an Austrian chamber octet I composed for & brought to Seattle for concerts & recording, really lovely folks. I’d gently suggest that my project Danubians (http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/danubians.html) is the more experimental Eastern European project, with Csaba Hajnoczy & Gabi Kenderesi from Kampec Dolores (H) & Pavel Fajt on drums (CZ). And, well there’s Kultur Shock (http://www.kulturshock.com) to sate my hunger for balkanic explosion.
Let’s keep talking about face transplants and such (driving home from surgery today, my friend from Mexico City told me he read such an article about that today, in La Jornada!).
The libretto’s going to be good…
May 7th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Why yes, Pitchfork Records does still exist, as does Greenlaw’s Music in Laconia, NH one of the other places I spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours and dollars in a few decades ago, flipping through the entire alphabet one record at a time as I looked for something new. As you’d suspect, there are not nearly as many records as there used to be in those stores, but I like seeing the Pitchfork storefront whenever I happen to drive up North Main. It’s true that we had to buy records then by cover or feel or instinct (and yeah, sometimes by word of mouth), if only because radio didn’t reach that far north and the Rolling Stone had already been stolen from the library before we got to read it. . . and the album covers were what we looked at, the liner notes what we read, when we listened to the music in our basements or our bedrooms. I’d like to keep from saying something stupid like “it’s not the same anymore,” but I can’t help it–it’s not. We all know that. And in some ways perhaps it’s better, because we can resurrect a guy like Nate Wooley and check out his MySpace Page if we try hard enough, but still, I miss being able to hold something in my hands that’s more real than a laptop. Sigh.
May 7th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Man, Rick. I’m still laughing from Kathy Ackers and Erica Jong! Thanks for this list of mixed brews, I’ll sample it over time.
May 7th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
i exist! nice piece of writing, though i think you missed the point of the mix i made. it was a bunch of fragments from various cassettes i’d come across, made or traded with peers over the past twenty years. in this internet age when you can get files of pretty much any record you want just by thinking of it, cassettes are a little harder to grub sound from. the mix also featured lots of bands that were either part of my town’s noise scene or musicians that i’d played shows with all over the states. this mix was meant to foster some sort of support within the community and be fun. i had fun making it, and enjoyed the randomness and diversity of following the sludgy, stoned noise of strangebrew with a red hot chili peppers song. i stand by the mix and still like every song on it. you can asses my character however you want, i will still exist and you will still not be able to believe it.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Fred Thomas, either a) you don’t exist, and Ted just used all those lower case letters in the post shown above to try to make it SEEM like you exist, which is very nearly convincing, but if you can’t produce your birth certificate, and not a photocopy but your actual birth certificate, I will never believe it, or b) I knew all along that you actually exist, and I was simply being facetious, to try to stress the eccentricity of the choices on the “guest mix.” If b, then I actually didn’t miss the point of the “guest mix,” I was just being facetious. I confess that it is a frequent event in my life that people don’t get the jokes, because they are delivered in long sentences and without smiling. I thought it was a very interesting “guest mix,” and even understood the leprous appearance of “Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead,” as homage to the way in which your source material was collected. And, as I say, I have been in Ypsilanti, and I am always glad when somewhere like that town has a “noise scene.” Cinci, OH, I have been given to believe, has a very excellent analogue electronica scene. Who would have believed this?
Will look forward to your producing the birth certificate, you figment.
May 11th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
P.S. Everyone please note corrected photo of Kid Millions, with thanks to the folks at Secretly Canadian, whose vinyl arm, I am now told, is going to be releasing the MAN FOREVER lp.
May 17th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
To Rick Moody-Your anthropological “postmodern” democratic collecting and sharing of music is stimulating. I am just wondering if you are leaning towards “art” music (based on some samples of your suggestions I found at you-tube), or if more primitive forms are valid in this sharing experience. You know–the Alan Lomax trip… Thanks for starting this forum.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:17 am
Harry, more primitive is always welcome. I have been doing ART lately just by happenstance. But I consider my primitive bona fides to be reasonably strong. I can get down with the Alan Lomax/Harry Smith stuff, to be sure. If you have suggestions, please feel free to share.
May 26th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Do you accept submissions from other McDermotts?