90s | Tunes Consumed: the Poutine Silver Platter

Archive for the '90s' Category

Holler, Wild Rose! and Confessions

Published by

August 8, 2007 in nostalgia, house-special, tall-walls, anytime, reverber, fuzz, 90s and tunes. 1 Comment

This album is fantastic.

From the very second it entered my earphones: John screaming “Holler!” met my ears and my world started to break anchor; at its very onset the drums crash, and the guitar reverbing is already at such a high plateau that you have to wonder where it’ll go from there. You soon find that it’s nothing like your typical build-tension-&-chorus formula, and it has a quality that blocks from the mind these drab flourescent walls, and the damp murky day that awaits beyond them. Even the ache of my growing wisdom teeth is (gratefully) lost somewhere in this noise.

The emotional core of the music will lead you inward, sit you down in a corner of its tangled web, and then toss streamers to the air that sparkle and tint whatever it is your mind might be occupied with. If I were somehow to not have all these duties to work, school, family and friends, I imagine myself sprawled out on the floor enraptured in this & in some kind of trance. Days, weeks would pass by, the world wouldn’t stop spinning by any means, but that wouldn’t matter to me.

I remember this feeling, and I think it was sometime in the 90s, when music was a new phenomenon to me. I’m not ashamed to say that at the time it was Marcy Playground and Radiohead that would take me places, and not that I’m trying to draw stylistic parallels here, but it brings me back to that feeling. Those were the days when there wasn’t a thing on my mind that dwelled outside my small hometown; those truly were weightless days.

–

Confession: It’s not always easy maintain this blog, constantly ebbing and flowing between excitement and boredom, yet always searching for the next great tune to indulge in and then pass on. It’s sort of my duty (and passion) now to keep on the fringe, and sort through the mess of new music. I’d say probably 90% of the time that I feel like a kid at a candy factory, and the rest of the time I feel kind of off-put asking myself all sorts of “whys” and “what-fors”.

Now, I do a lot of baking & cooking (stay with me here), probably more than the average 21 year-old college student, but I only cook when there’s an absolute need, a desire that burbles up from my gut. When I do cook, I like to cook up the most elaborate dishes, and Alley helps quite a bit with that and her worldly cuisine. I can make the meanest German chocolate cake, but I imagine sometimes that if I were to cook always, daily, and without that inner tension, would it just be a job, and would flavour start to fade from everything I taste?

I sometimes get that fear with music, the sweetest of all candies, by merely writing in this space. When I find something like this music here, and it really makes me feel something; it takes me both backwards and forwards, then I really know what I’m in it for. It’s the delight, the pleasure, the feeling, and to write about it, as hard as it is to express sometimes, I’m thankful for that too.

I wonder, who else has to go through this, too?

–

Holler, Wild Rose! has this CD, you know? How about you check out this sampling of my favourite tracks from Our Little Hymnal, and then go buy it in September if you like it. You can keep up to date over at their home on the web, even.

indulge?
Holler, Wild Rose! - Mercy Beat
Holler, Wild Rose! - Holler, Wild Rose!
Holler, Wild Rose! - Captive Train

In a World of Funny Changes (aka the Pout Education Hour: lo-fi)

Published by

tyler

June 24, 2007 in indie, lo-fi, podcast, 90s, history, folk, fuzz and tunes. 2 Comments

[lofi]

There’s something distinctly surreal about oldage recording techniques of the past decades. What came before the 90s was production that relied solely on (physical) tape recording and systems wired entirely in analog fashion. This is now a mainstay to what is most often seen as the ‘indie’ sound. While that’s not to say that indie artists should strive to be lo-fi, rather this quality is still present as a result of low-budget sound engineering (or, even because some producers/studios insist on it, ala Montreal’s very own Hotel 2 Tango).

Like Sam Beam or Jeff Mangum in their basements with their dusty 8-track rigs, shuffling around furniture, throwing up curtains to try and exercise control over the sound - or not even, maybe just recording amongst the mildew-laden concrete walls and hoping for the best. I recall reading in Kim Cooper’s 33 1/3 on Neutral Milk Hotel the way Schneider explained how fuzz coming from the sound was just a side-effect, that it could be removed with some proper filters or equipment. If you listen to any “studio” NMH album you’ll be delighted to find that there is, literally, a wall of fuzz emitting from your speakers. Jeff loved it, he wanted every instrument he could possibly muster up to have that hoarse sound. To him, it was good old times, like 45s (like 1945).

In technical terms, lo-fi has meanings apart from fuzziness, believe it or not. It literally means “lo-fidelity” which, contrasted to “high-fidelity” (or hi-fi) has many flaws: a sound may hum, fuzz, or just generally distort (distortion like a blown bass speaker might sound), and typically has lower frequency response. The band of human hearing peaks at 20kHz so you can expect to miss out on those precious high tones.

For me, lo-fi records have a special time and place. It’s often the case that something so crisp, pristine and precise as a full-out digital recording is just plain distracting and overwhelming. (I can’t, for instance, wake up every morning to the powerhouse that is Battles. These guys know the science of sound, just go to one of their shows and bask in the spaghetti stage of cables & devices, and their studio effort is no exception.) At these times I’d rather prefer the quiet, unobtrusive Sam Beam, or the buzzy horns of Scott Spillane. Even Portishead’s studio efforts, as electronic as they are, sound somehow humble and inviting under these conditions. It’s something you can think clearly on top of, and usually talk over at a normal listening volume.

Without further ado, here’s a playlist to help you through your own times of fidelity:

Tunes Consumed Presents: fuzzy essentials
01. Daniel Johnston - Speeding Motorcycle (1983)
02. Portishead - Pedestal (1994)
03. Woods - Night Creature (2007)
04. Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex (1996)
05. Band of Horses - Our Swords (2006)
06. Slow Hand Motem - Japanese Lampshades (2004)
07. Iron & Wine - The Rooster Moans (2002)
08. Beck - Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods (1994)
Total Time: 26 minutes

You can also download the entire thing as a podcast.

Got a favourite lo-fi artist/track/tid-bit? Let us know in the comments!

the Pout Education Hour: INDIE!!1

Published by

tyler

June 12, 2007 in punk-revival, 90s, history, rehash, fuzz, montreal and tunes. 0 Comments

tapetapetape

The previous incarnation of this exclusive Pout feature tackled a genealogy of music that is, at least now, synonymous with a certain style of sound, its typifying character so often attributed to The Specials. This installment moves onto something a little more recent, so recent that you are, in fact, participating in it. Regardless of what anyone tells you, “indie” is not a movement that can be linked to any particular brand of music- at least not yet. If you were to take it in that context alone, it would be as meaningless as the “alternative” label which still somehow permeates our vocabulary.

If “indie” were a tree, you would find that it has 21 rings. 1986 was the year when NME decided to distribute a cassette through its own established mail-order service, and this cassette was called C86. This cassette concerned itself only with the freshest independent-label artists, and festered in time between punk of the 70s/80s, and what most (probably rightfully) consider to be the real independent roots in the 90s. See, the C86 cassette is merely a prelude & aside for what’s really on the table for us.

For all intents and purposes, “indie” began in the early 90’s. Major labels had long since snowballed in strength, with small ones being bought out by larger ones, who would then buy out smaller ones in return, thereby extending the dark kingdom. See, like Trent Reznor in his old age, these labels just got chubby. Even still, being such a lucrative business, the music industry found dastardly ways to maintain control, essentially becoming what was, in the 90s, pretty close to a monopoly on music. With the Big 4 reigning over store-front distribution channels, and even controlling FM-radio with illegal DJ pay-offs, things quite frankly were sticky for the little guy. There were a lot of talented artists that just wouldn’t make the cut. A lot of wasted talent that was somehow just not timely or “profitable”.

But c’mon now, this was the 90’s, a decade of magical happenings. Cassette tapes & 8-track recorders were not hard to come by, and, stemming from the punk DIY-ethos of the 70’s & 80’s, this was nothing short of practical for artists to consider. Mix tapes, and eventually recordable CDs were able to be produced on a small scale (where previously there were only expensive vinyls), and then these tapes could be traded around at local shows or by inter-city mail exchange. This was the technological backlash that opened a whole new avenue for artists. When artists were able to produce their own merch this allowed scenes to sprout up all over the nation, entirely unaffected by the inertia of the RIAA. In short, one might therefore define indie as not being unsigned, but being unsigned by any of the Big 4 (or their subsidiaries).

A list of notable uprisings (90s-now):
The Elephant 6 Recording Company
Essentially an American-midwestern commune of artists who dwelled in the cassette culture, and produced their own music day in, day out. Acts such as: Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Of Montreal (to name but a few) grew out of this scene. While some are no longer together, their influences reach far & wide even today.
mp3:
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
The Apples in Stereo - Tidal Wave

The Washington D.C. Punk-Revival scene
Bolstered and fueled by none other than Ian MacKaye (of Fugazi), who would later found and co-head his own label (Dischord Records) to help struggling D.C. indie artists like Q and Not U, Minor Threat, Jawbox, & Rites of Spring.
mp3: Q and Not U - Passwords

Matt Mahaffey
Who clearly deserves his own scene. His dedication to Self proved that one-man power pop was entirely attainable, releasing ten albums in ten years, four of which were released to the internet and freely available (still).
mp3: Self - Mother Nature’s Fault

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
An avantegarde/post-rock outfit formed in our very own Montreal scene. Honestly they need no introduction, but the fact that their politics had a viral-like quality to them (due in large part to the sheer number of members, and likewise the number of side projects that splintered out) which is still a mainstay to the Montreal/post-rock scene is impressive to say the least. They also run & manage our most prized venue La Sala Rossa, and the “analog-only” recording studio: Hotel 2 Tango.
mp3: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya

This post has been part of an indie blog carnival in conjunction with the fine gents over @ Motel de Moka. Be sure to swing over there for another “indie” introspection, ala The Post Modern Condition.

And for the rest of the carnie sites, dig:
01. Riot Grrrl (& Indie)
A little backstory to the riot grrrl musical movement (+ tracks).
02. Summer Web Search (& Indie)
Ideas on where to find some tunes for your summer pleasure.
03. Indie Bop
A little electro-buzz to top off your indie-an summer (okay, that was bad.)