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falkenscreen · 4 years ago

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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

There’s bad, there’s good, and there’s Eurovision.

The European ‘Song’ Contest, to which this film for many will serve as introduction, neither sits at any apex of cultural achievement nor the ironic bulwarks of saccharine kitsch to which many entrants aspire. Rather, amidst its longevity and oddly unique role in cross-border co-operation, the competition, to which Australia is specially beholden, marks its own measures of success and brands of cultural height.

Tied not necessarily to any independent form, skill or recognisable ingenuity, appeal relies on brazenness, melding of styles and a nakedly single-minded, utterly shameless pursuit of shock-filled fun. To this end, it’s amazing Will Ferrell and Adam McKay haven’t mined these depths already.

Reportedly a huge fan of the show, Ferrell, committing as always, is regretfully on auto-pilot for whole lengths, drawing on the manner and storylines of his underrated Blades of Glory and early success Zoolander as regards the relationship between his Lars and the characters’ “extremely handsome father;” Pierce Brosnan having some fun with comedy for change.

The story is of the broadest if heart-warmingly familial strokes elevated by its novel focus on the tournament; anyone who’s seen more than one Ferrell comedy (Old School fans should recognise one of the gags) will be across these stylings; complete with a Blades-esque MacGuffin in the form of an unreachable note. We’re all familiar with the follow your dreams against all opposition arc and even if it can get tired it doesn’t get old.

With Ferrell persistently glaring at the camera ala his Mustafa and reminding everyone that he’s here to make them laugh, McAdams, unsurprisingly, is best in show. Her reactions to a pro forma troupe of yet unseen backup dancers invading her solo and her negotiations with a group of elves, yes elves; pure gold. Viewers seem to be constantly finding out that the severely underappreciated comic performer can put in turn after turn like this and unlike Ferrell nails the balance of earnestness, knowing self-seriousness and tactless flamboyance central to Eurovision’s greatest hits.

There’s a caveat that has to be given before anyone watches this movie and that is you are only going to enjoy this if you are moderately familiar with and endeared by Eurovision. The film does not serve as a primer for the uninitiated absent proper grounding in the dynamics of the competition and those unbeholden to its unique stylings will likely feel as unimpressed by Ferrell’s tonally similar antics.

For those most dedicated decades-long Eurovision fans who wake up at 5am every year to watch every Semi-Final live, this author among them, you will get many a high off of this and more so for our having sadly missed the contest in its traditional form this May past. To the filmmakers’ great credit, they picked Iceland as the focus and amidst many playful digs at the nation, the treatment of the Icelandic Government being a highlight, managed to nail the effective winners of this year’s non-tournament.

And it would not be a Eurovision movie without being (in respects) avowedly self-referential, with the film taking some time out of proceedings to address that this is in no small part a group of North Americans behind and in front of the camera. Taking the mickey via another appropriately parodic band of US tourists who have only just landed in town, it’s some of the tightest scripting therein as every line hits the mark. Itself landing on Netflix, Fire Saga is probably best served by a platform where the most well-attuned fans can discover this and return for repeat viewings at their leisure and as they might otherwise have tuned into the annual tradition.

The varied numbers (and song titles) which form the lead-up to and actual competition are successes not just for their catchiness and necessary originality but for effectively satirising one of the hardest things to mock and exaggerating that which barely bears exaggeration; generating in the process what would typically be Eurovision bangers in any given year. Graciously recognising that Belarus are invariably stand-outs, there’s a classy Lordi reference alongside years-old highlights and fair acknowledgement of the pivotal (if often biased) roles respective countries’ commentators play. The hark-backs to classic Eurovision numbers will have any fan beaming and the elapsing of the first Semi-Final, encompassing one of the great Eurovision props, is uproarious while speaking to the extremely sincere ethos of the entire escapade.

The blocking of the stage performances, akin to how the broadcasts are typically handled, are too coyly deferential and situate us amongst this extravagance better than a more highly stylised or numerous camera setup which would have likely faltered.

Stars of past, clearly having the time of their lives in this reunion, welcomely make appearances, among them Alexander Rybak (“trust us, bring a violin”), though the best and most welcome surprise comes from a winner of recent years lovingly reciting one of Eurovision’s very best numbers on Edinburgh’s streets.

On this, there are varyingly hilarious interpretations as to why the competition was set in Edinburgh. It could be acknowledging that the British are least likely to win this and if so even less likely to relegate the fanfare to Edinburgh, though with the Russian entrant (Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens) explicitly lampooning the Isles’ standing in the tournament its more likely the filmmakers’ subtle advocacy of the longstanding hope that Scotland will one day get their own highly competitive place.

As to Stevens’ contender, it’s a well-known problem that many of the countries which participate have appalling records on human rights and LGBT welfare. Amidst a more dramatically sensitive reckoning with this matter, his performance, Stevens’ best to date, is outright hilarious as Lemtov lion-tames extremely scantily-clad men about the stage in typical Eurovision fashion.

Lovingly landing jabs on the annual extravaganza, infamous for its nondescript, heavily generic slogans, the tagline ‘Perfect Harmony’ for the in-film comp shows that we’re dealing with real fans here, as does moreover the exclamation, as to why there are no cars on the road, that everyone’s “at home, watching Eurovision.” The film too acknowledges the constant push for and joy when singers indeed sing in Indigenous languages or emphatically about wherever they’ve ventured from with several seemingly throwaway gags, including a great one centring on whales, happily coming full circle.

Absent the voting process, this is too a stickler for Eurovision lore and procedure; though Sweden did have seven performers on stage and should have been disqualified.

Finally, there’s an odd tone at the centre of this film which arrests it from the heights of greatness to which Eurovision otherwise transpires. Co-produced by Jon Ola Sand of the European Broadcasting Union who makes an appearance here and in every Eurovision, even if, and it would be fairly speculative and unusual if so, full creative and parodic freedom were permitted alongside the name’s licensing rights and co-operation, a parody, even a loving one, just isn’t the same when the subjects and stalwarts are so in on the joke and stand to so outwardly benefit.

Yes Eurovision relies to some extent on being self-referential ala ‘Love, Love, Peace, Peace’ but it was only one year among many where the hosts winkingly outshone competitors; the platform otherwise persisting on a lifeblood of entrants’ own (and self-professed devotees) earnest if outlandish skewering. Regular commentator Graham Norton’s true to life cameos are notably distinct and illustrative in this regard; his mawkish if impassioned demeanour emblematic of the tone pursued herein, just like a local townsman declaring “we know they’re awful, but they’re our awful!”

It’s why Trey Parker and Matt Stone refused celebrities the opportunity to voice their own marionettes in Team America, and why Zoolander 2 never worked when all the fashion icons wanted to show they could poke fun at themselves as well. Sure it meant a lot of the gags here might not have happened, but if they’d called it almost anything else the same niche audience would have lined up and there’s no way the winners past wouldn’t have joined the festivities for what turned out to be our collective annual dose of insanity.

‘Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga’ is now streaming on Netflix

#xl #reviews #netflix #eurovision #eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga #will ferrell #rachel mcadams #graham norton #pierce brosnan

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louis-valentine-blog · 5 years ago

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Playlist Breakdown - January 2020

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus/Josie Moon/My Chemical Romance/Coldplay/+others

Welcome, one and all, to my first ever playlist breakdown. It’s tasty, it’s fresh, it’s hot off the presses for the emotional messes. Let’s get into it.

January has been a weird month for me, not gonna lie. Coming out of the holidays I have a tan, a renewed sense of self-identity and a fierce appreciation for the people in my life with whom I have close relationships. The music of this month represents a shift from a sun-drenched new years’ holiday into the grind of starting full-time work as a self-employed writer. It’s been a wild ride and the year’s not even started. Oh boy.

What’s that? Oh yeah, the songs…

1. False Pretense / The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. This track is a favourite from way back, and it’s mainly just here as a check-in. Hey RJA. How ya doin’? Don’t You Fake It still a banger? You bet. This band taught me so many things about great sugar-punk songwriting when I was first starting out making my own music - and when you think that this track comes off the same record that gave us such classics as Face Down and Your Guardian Angel, it’s no surprise.

2. Victor Hotel / Josie Moon. This track has been a mainstay in my monthly playlist ever since it dropped at the start of summer. Victor Hotel brings textural arrangements and mature pop songwriting together into this gorgeous collage of instrumental and vocal production that’s simultaneously old-school and lo-fi, but undeniably modern as fuck. The album art and title add a heavy pull of intrigue, too - I don’t know what or where Victor Hotel is, but listening to the music makes me feel like I’ve been there.

3. Summertime / My Chemical Romance. I was a latecomer to the MCR love train, dipping my toes into their discography during my high school career and only fully taking a deep dive during some dark times in 2017. Like so many others, MCR helped to pull me through the shit and into the light. Having been gifted The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys in paperback by Taylor for Christmas, I waded into the world of Danger Days over the summer and haven’t come back since. You know those rare songs that walk into your life at precisely the right time, squeeze on your feels like a fucking trash compactor and just don’t let go? Summertime did that for me.

4. Orphans / Coldplay. Not much to say about this one. I’m definitely missing some sort of memo when it comes to Coldplay’s new record - it’s not bad by any stretch, it just has me yearning for the days of Mylo Xyloto which then begs the question as to why I’m not just listening to that. The hooks are there, the production’s there, the lyrics hold up, it’s just… tired. Someone get Coldplay a double shot espresso, stat.

5. Zero Percent / My Chemical Romance. This one’s a real interesting cut from MCR’s Danger Days era. Released as a B-side to the Kids From Yesterday single, it had me hooked from the start with a drum and bass (???) style opening that then progresses into more familiar MCR territory. It’s damn good all told - the vocal melodies fall a little flat if I’m honest, but Gerard’s delivery is just too huge to fail.

6. Rangers / Randa. I had the pleasure of meeting Randa at an out of town show with Holloway Holiday. We were both supporting Auckland act Openside for their New Zealand tour, and we got to watch each other’s performances and chat a bit backstage. He’s the most genuine, authentic and out-there human being, and that ethos absolutely saturates his music. Rangers is a standout for me because of the syncopated beat production and the absolutely infectious chorus - not to mention a fresh and wholesome flow in the verses that you just don’t see a lot in rap. Totally original and captivating.

7. Give ’Em Hell, Kid / My Chemical Romance. Another MCR classic that I discovered way too late in life. This thing is a fucking steam train of a punk rock song featuring the huge production and lyrical finesse we’ve come to expect from the boys. The thing that always gets me about this one is the vocal effect when the verse kicks in, ‘I took a train out of New Orleans...’ it’s infectious and angsty as hell. I’m absolutely in love.

8. Damn Regret / The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Another Don’t You Fake It throwback. A lot of what I said on False Pretense can be said for this track too - impeccable production and songwriting, an absolute anthem of my high school years. Ronnie’s vocals are a standout in this song - the sheer range and delivery this guy has is basically unheard of in pop-punk. He’s like a grungier Brendon Urie, with a voice to match.

9. Soaked / BENEE. Having only discovered BENEE very recently I can fairly say this track cemented my option that some of the world’s best pop music comes out of New Zealand. This song cleaned up at the VNZMAs, and to be honest it feels like BENEE is verging on international success too. This song rides the metaphor of water for misguidedly infatuated love - not groundbreaking by any means but it’s catchy as hell and the production carries it all the way through.

10. The Piss, The Perfume / Hayley Mary. I discovered this track (and this artist) about five minutes before writing this, and I just had to add it to the end of the playlist. This track has this gorgeous, romantic, over-saturated quality to it and I’m kinda loving it. Quite a classic rock groove with really modern sounding vocals and catchy melodies. The compression on every element of the song is really tightly packed and tidy, which is not for everyone but I love it. Great discovery. Go listen!

11. Some Kind Of Disaster/All Time Low. Some Kind Of Disaster dropped at the end of the month and HOPEFULLY means there’s a new ATL record on the way. And if this song is anything to go by, I’m excited for whatever follows. This track comes together to represent solidifying of the modern ATL sound (a la Last Young Renegade) but also a call back to the good old days, more in the vein of Nothing Personal. Perhaps telling that they just celebrated the tenth anniversary of that record. This track is catchy, upbeat and lyrically interesting (standard ATL fare) but I feel like they’re really leaning heavily on the songwriting this time, as opposed to drowning the song the production tricks that have been mainstays in their sound as of late. I’m excited for what’s to come.

So, that’s it for my FIRST EVER playlist breakdown. If you’ve read this far... THANK YOU! Shouldn’t you be doing something more important? Anyway... How’d I do? Do you agree with what I said? You’re the best, you’re the best, what should I review next... (kidding). Let’s see where February takes us - the year is young and there’s a world of music, new and old, to explore. I can’t wait. C u.

#music #newmusic #music blog #music review #my chemical romance #all time low #coldplay #emo boy #emo girl #band trash #bands

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jobrosupdates · 6 years ago

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‘Sucker’ Punch: The Behind-the-Scenes Players to Launch Jonas Brothers’ First No. 1 | Variety

The trio's manager, A&R and label chief explain how an authentic thaw in sibling relations led to a strategy of silence, then shock and awe.

March 11, 2019 by Chris Willman

America is collectively a sucker for the Jonas Brothers again — or at least that’s the strong indication from first-week results for their comeback, a full decade after the trio last had a top 30 single. “Sucker” just became their first song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and the first by any band to debut at the top of the chart in more than 20 years. According to Buzz Angle Music, the first seven days for “Sucker” racked up a combination of 30 million audio streams, 16 million video streams and 88,000 digital sales, on top of a fast radio start that found nearly every pop station adding the tune.

How’s it possible one of the biggest phenomena of the late 2000s never had a No. 1? Back in their original heyday, radio and older fans were both mutually suspicious of any act coming out of the Disney camp, no matter how massive the ticket sellouts or record sales (they had four straight platinum or double-platinum albums, if you count the “Camp Rock” soundtrack). Ten years later, pent-up fan energy is meeting no such gatekeeper resistance.

“As big as they were previously, they’ve never seen this kind of chart action, which is pretty wild at this point of their career,” Monte Lipman, the chairman/CEO of Republic Records, tells Variety. “They were an arena act, but in terms of the traditional record flying up and down the charts, they never had that. From the outside looking in, I was always intrigued by their success and thinking about what would happen if they had a record that stormed the charts on top of all of that, like they do now. So we’ve been having a blast.”

Crucial parts of the campaign: “Having Nick’s and Kevin’s wives and Joe’s fiancée be a part of the video was really powerful, and that visual provided a lot of fuel at launch that was beneficial to the whole campaign,” says Phil McIntyre, founder/CEO of Philymack, their management company. “And the platform of James (Corden, whose show featured the Jonas Brothers for an entire week) was phenomenal and made for great, fun content that travels.” The “Carpool Karaoke” was even revealing enough about the brothers’ personal story to make up for a lot of interviews they could have done and didn’t. But prior to the video and Corden, the perhaps even more critical component in the plan was… silence. “It was definitely part of our strategy, to try to keep it under the radar, and it was helpful that it stayed there,” says McIntyre, “because we were totally expecting that it wouldn’t.”

“As hard as it is to keep a secret in 2019, especially when you’re three of the most followed guys online,” says Republic’s EVP of A&R, Wendy Goldstein, “they did a great job at keeping it quiet. And the Jonas Brothers as a band may have been dormant, but their individual development and success probably contributed to amplifying excitement. They’ve been out there for six years in the public eye, but not as Jonas Brothers,” she says. “It was the perfect tease.”

Adds Lipman, “Because when you think about the marketplace, nearly 150,000 new songs are made available every single week, and the greatest competition we’ve got right now is that sheer volume — the static, the noise. So in this case the best thing to do was almost the opposite, something without any messaging, and literally just drop it out of the sky — and ka-boom, it’s the loudest bang you can create.” But everyone was concerned the secrecy could be blown at any moment. “Any time the guys were ever seen in the same room together, the rumors started flying. So there was a lot of denial, absolutely.”

Plausible deniability, though, because the Jonases really did have another reason to be in one another’s company — a documentary — and the recording was an outgrowth of the unofficial on-camera therapy sessions undertaken for that.

“A year ago, we started making a documentary with just the intention of telling what an incredible story these brothers have of taking this journey together and growing up in the public eye together as a family, and the ups and downs of it,” says McIntyre. “And it was not to necessarily make new music or anything like that. So it unfolded in the most authentic way possible, and I think that’s part of why there was an element of surprise, because for the most part when they were seen together, most people thought it was for the documentary.”

When did a documentary shoot turn into a resumption of the Jonas Brothers as a commercial and artistic enterprise? “I would say it was toward the end of the summer last year,” McIntyre says. “Because we probably did four or five different trips with the brothers: They went to Australia where Joe was shooting ‘The Voice.’ They went to Jersey and to a couple other locations, and probably after the fourth or fifth location, they had sort of processed through so much of the things that tore ‘em apart earlier in their career, and just started to get honest with each other. And there’s a magic to when they’re together, and as much success as anyone’s had on their own solo journey, it doesn’t necessarily compare to what they’ve experienced as brothers. So it was toward the end of summer that they started to have the conversations around it, and it was at that point that I said, ‘I’ve got to get with Monte and talk through this.’ Because in my mind, there was only one place to do this, and that was with Republic. I just knew that they would they would be able to nail it.”

Finding a new label home for the Jonas Brothers, many years after their departure from Disney’s Hollywood Records, wasn’t a stretch. Republic had had Joe’s interim project, the group DNCE, and been jointly involved with Island Records on Nick’s solo career.

Lipman says he didn’t offer any preferences for which stylistic direction the Jonas Brothers should take their new music, once he was brought in. “Monte Lipman? No,” he chuckles, as if the idea that he’d get personally involved in their A&R is a laugh. “I learned a long time ago just let them let them do their thing. The cool thing about working with the Philymack camp in particular and the Jonas Brothers as their partners is that when they come to the table, so much of it is been vetted, and ‘Hey, this is the way we’d like to present the music. This is the aesthetic.’”

But Goldstein did get highly involved as recording continued — and had a strong preference when it came time to pick a single out of the supposed two albums’ worth of material the trio has recorded. “There are some really powerful bangers ready to go,” she says. “But ‘Sucker’ just had a vibe. It felt like a great way to come out. I think everybody agreed on that.” After her persuasiveness, anyway. “There definitely was a debate as far as what the first look would be,” says McIntyre, “and to Wendy’s credit, she was the one who said, ‘I feel strongly that “Sucker” is the right first sound and first song.’”

“Sucker” is much more akin to the dance-oriented material Nick and Joe have done in the interim years than the guitar-based, power-pop sound the brothers played in the 2000s. At recent “secret” shows in New York and L.A., the group sounded like they did in the first part of their career — that is, like a straight-up, heavy-on-the-hooks rock band — and they rearranged the one new song they played, “Sucker,” just enough that it fit in with the guitars-and-live-drums ethos of their old sound. But that may not be an indication of where the eventual album will be headed.

“Creatively, they’ve evolved, as any artists would after a decade,” says Goldstein, not quite willing to commit them to a genre. “I don’t think it’s tied to any era in particular. They were adamant about making an honest, real and somewhat raw comeback. They draw on their history together, but it’s an exciting new chapter.” McIntyre is a little more committal about how fans shouldn’t expect the new material to exactly revive the 2000s: “I would say that you will be able to see and hear the influences of what Joe did in his solo career and what Nick did in his solo career come together in a very natural way.”

It was a good time for the brothers to reunite, personal reasons aside, because although their solo endeavors had kept them somewhat in the limelight — Nick as a solo artist and Joe with DNCE had both made the top 10, and had ongoing success on the dance charts — neither had had such an ongoing run of hits that a resumption of the brother act would seem like a step backward. Nothing was guaranteed: The last time the Jonas Brothers tried coming back after a layoff, in 2012-13, on an indie label, the media and radio weren’t much interested, and their personal disagreements took such a toll that a planned album and tour were canceled as they officially broke up. But clearly a few years of their absence as a collective made the public heart grow fonder.

“They were part of a lot of people’s most influential years, of their childhoods or beyond,” says McIntyre, “and so I think that the timing of them bringing those positive, good times has resonated, and people appreciate them now for being the soundtrack to their lives.” Plus, there’s the small matter of the song being good, “so we do get the opportunity to get a whole new audience that isn’t there for nostalgic reasons. It’s very much a two-pronged strategy.”

As for an album, “We’re working through the timeline now,” McIntyre says. “I think everybody would like to get it out as quick as possible, so I would look to the first half of this year.” As for a live return, the brothers had 35 minutes of material very solidly rehearsed for their secret El Rey show last week, but the nature of a tour is still under discussion. Picking up where they left off at the height of their careers, in arenas, has been part of the conversation, but so have more modest venues. Nick leaves this week to shoot a “Jumanji” sequel, which may put a slight speed bump in those discussions.

Will the documentary, done in partnership with Amazon, come out simultaneously with the album? “As of right now they’re separate things,” McIntyre says, “but we’re looking at it. Because as you tell this story, you realize that so much of the story revealed itself through the process that then led to the music. So we’re playing with just how to kind of roll out the two bodies of work.”

McIntyre says some healing had gone on before work on the documentary started, but the filming process caught any sense of alienation further breaking down. “I think that they are like most families out there — that they had touched on the issues enough to be able to move forward, but they didn’t really get into it,” says the manager. “They didn’t go into the depth of where the hurt was each one of them really felt in those moments, and being able to articulate it and explain it to each other. That was a discovery along the way of making this. It wasn’t something that we knew was there, necessarily; it was once we got into it, we sort of all looked at each other and were like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of layers to this that need to be discussed.’”

Lipman also says the documentary will further reveal that the reunion “is not a marketing ploy. It’s not anything that was calculated. It wasn’t a money grab.” But if they’re able to mint some out of the finally refreshed brotherly love, that will be a significant Jonas bonus.

Source: Variety

#jonas brothers #phil mcintyre #monte lipman #text #article #2019

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howshegotover · 4 years ago

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The Weight (Take a Load Off Frankie)

February 19, 2017

And here is what I have to say about the 76ers: The management of any NBA team boils down to like I how use twitter: it’s all secret jokes. Why did we accept the ethos of the thought Process that regards not winning as a win? The future is a terrifying lie. I still kinda disrespect my friends who are making babies for it. Sam Hinkie tried to imagine what 2020 looks like? Did he know that the movie Idiocracy and Kreayshawn’s “Gucci, Gucci” would stay finessing the acceleration of increased returns at a shocking pace? The 76ers have been for years making a mockery of “why we play.” Losing Hinkie*, getting Simmons to join Embiid, it was conceivable that the team finally is going through with Not Tanking. And yet! We have this:

(The Ringer)

And what’s most distressing is this Joel Embiid injury report. Like, the brass announces he’s torn his meniscus on February 11. Oh, That is to say, he tore it on January 20, MRIs confirmed it then. So why do we know about it on February 11? But what do we see before club o’clock the night before?

(Matt Steadman)

Oh that’s right, it’s yr mans pop-lockin to a cut from Purple Reign with no shirt on in front of thousands of Meek Mill fans. … despite the fact that being a Meek Mill fan in 2017 is admitting you live under a bridge and demand those trying to cross solve three riddles before crossing … Management states they’d known about the injury since January 20th. Which puts us in the situation: if NBA brass starts to act like the fuckin NFL when it comes to injury reports, this sport is gonna implode. You have to consider: are the 76ers just proud of alternative facts? Or is their incompetence pointing to a larger gap in player injury reports and minutes played? And Meek Mill might be responsible for Nicki not releasing any bangers in a year, but he’s a muthafuckin local hero! How can you tear Embiid from the team weeks after he tore his meniscus, because he did some rudimentary dabs at a concert by a prodigious native? Do you really want all of Philadelphia to hate you?

*There is nothing more Philadelphia in The Letter than the sentence lamenting the loss of the Blackberry dedicated keyboard.

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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What Happens When You Get Famous Off One Song?

MILTON KEYNES, England — Last summer, a teenager named Tom Austin decided on a whim to record a rap song. He’d never made music before. But even as he was writing down lyrics — picking out references from an iPhone note of random stuff he’d been keeping — he was strangely sure of himself.“I don’t want to sound bigheaded,” he said, “but I knew it would do bits.” (Translation: Mr. Austin knew the song would connect widely.)The result was “Mary Berry,” a delightful, deadpan ode to life in small-town Britain. The title is a nod to the 84-year-old former “Great British Bake Off” co-host. In the song, Mr. Austin says he “needs a girl like” Ms. Berry; he defeats a local man in badminton; pulls out a secret Android cellphone; performs his own circumcision; threatens to fight the TV host Piers Morgan; flexes his discount Slazenger sneakers; and announces, “Top thing on my bucket list is to slide tackle the Queen.” For his rap alter-ego he borrowed the name Niko Bellic, an Eastern European gangster character from the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.As Mr. Austin later wrote on Instagram: “I decided to make a song within like 2 days and then 3 weeks later I signed a deal for it, now it’s 2mil+ streams across 3 platforms CRUUUD.”This success seems both calculated and hilariously accidental. In the intro to the song, he offhandedly shouts out the flashy East London afrobeats group NSG; not long after its release, he was touring Britain as their opening act. He’s taking meetings and other “bits and bobs,” Mr. Austin said, and carefully planning a second single with a record label. He is now 19.In 2016, 13-year-old Billie Eilish posted the song “Ocean Eyes” on her SoundCloud and went to bed. She woke up to see it had accumulated thousands of plays overnight. She is now one of the biggest pop stars alive.The 16-year-old rapper Bhad Bhabie has built her career off a catchphrase-minting “Dr. Phil” appearance. The 13-year-old country singer Mason Ramsey has capitalized well off a recorded Walmart yodeling session. Their sudden, culture-saturating music moments would have been impossible before SoundCloud, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Now the music industry, social media and the influence industry at large are racing to adapt for, and borrow from, such overnight success stories.Tom Austin — or Niko B, for that matter, as he’s now calling himself, possibly to avoid litigation — is nowhere near as well known as Bhad Bhabie or Billie Eilish. His success, to date, is very much niche, and contained within Britain. But he’s at a crossroads each saw for themselves. He made a song. It did bits. What’s next?

Getting Down on Friday

A decade ago, instant virality could be a curse. Rebecca Black was 13 in 2011 when her uncanny-valley banger “Friday” — written for her in exchange for $4,000 of her mother’s money — exploded.“It took me years to get healed,” she said in a recent interview. “When you’re 13, nobody can explain to you how mentally extreme everything is.”Back then, she had vague dreams of Broadway, but no real career plan. In the years after “Friday,” she fended off all kinds of cynical business entreaties.Now at 22, she’s built a team around her that she trusts. And she’s back making music: “Sweetheart,” her latest release, is available on all streaming platforms. She’s also talking about her experience, and getting very positive reactions.“I had to figure out the long and hard way that nobody can give you this career,” Ms. Black said. “I had to do it in my own way.”In the years since “Friday,” it’s possible audiences have become less judgmental.While there’s still a bit of stigma associated with sudden virality, especially when it feels easily won, maybe we understand now that tunes can come from anywhere. Maybe we got tired of getting upset.Or maybe the latest generation got better at being ready. In the end, Bhad Bhabie has bangers. Mason Ramsey is a legit country radio presence. And Lil Nas X’s path to success was, on a much grander scale, similar to Tom Austin’s. He used meme knowledge and a social media base to turn “Old Town Road” into the longest-running No. 1 single in Billboard history.Ms. Black, as a pioneer, had no idea what was about to hit her. Teen creators now live knowing that any given thing they post might just change their life.

Crafting the Second Single on the Poets Estate

On a recent weekday on the high street of the tiny old town of Newport Pagnell, near London, Mr. Austin sat in a foofy coffee shop with a Realtree-style coat zipped to the neck. (He only opened it once, briefly, to remove a single key from a Prada fanny pack surreptitiously strapped to his waist.) He grew up, and still lives, in a humdrum subdivision down the road called the Poets Estate. He and his buddies used to skateboard, break into abandoned places, hang out at the kebab shop.And the rest of the time — “deffo, 100 percent” — he was on the internet. At 8 or 9, that meant building Lego animations on YouTube. (“Like, a skeleton horse chasing a guy,” Mr. Austin said.) By 14 or 15, it was prank calls and mock news channel stuff. He managed to build up a bit of a YouTube following, then switched his attention to Instagram, where he first posted cool-guy fit pics before having a revelation.“Mate, if I’m just showing you what I’m wearing, that’s not gonna get me anywhere. This is Instagram. You can’t deep it,” Mr. Austin said, meaning “take it seriously.” So he pivoted and started posting stuff like “me looking in the mirror, and in the mirror is this really buff guy,” he said. “It was the right turn to make.”Around the same time, inspired by the multi-hyphenate talent Tyler, the Creator, he introduced a clothing label called Crowd; he now sells to customers as far as Dubai. He used to work at a Subway, but quit when a Crowd pop-up netted him more money in one weekend than he’d previously made in a month. He even wrote an elaborate resignation letter: “Thanks to everyone even Carlos bye Marisa I hope I can transfer my sandwich making skills to my future day to day life.”As much as anything, “Mary Berry” was a promo for Crowd. (The video is full of Crowd clothes, and a post-video drop was his best-selling to date.) But it was also born of a generational D.I.Y. ethos: Why not do it?Mr. Austin points to Alex From Glasto, a fellow pasty British teen who won viral fame last summer when he was pulled onstage at Glastonbury by the rapper Dave to perform the hit “Thiago Silva.” Since then, Alex From Glasto has released his own single. “I was like, ‘No offense to him, but if this guy can blow up …” Mr. Austin said, trailing off.The making and release of “Mary Berry” was tied — breathlessly, naturally — with Instagram documentation: edited fake DMs from Drake asking to get on the remix, surreal footage of Mr. Austin surrounded by a platoon of life-size Mary Berry cardboard cutouts. “I did a video of me throwing a basketball out a window and then the Lakers being like ‘yo, we need to sign you right now,’” he said. The first Instagram Story tracking the journey is just captioned “about to become a full time rapper.”He also got friends who are big on Instagram, like @GullyGuyLeo, to post a snippet of the song.Then he landed attention of @ImJustBait, an influential British meme account run by a slick operator named Antz. (According to lore that Mr. Austin repeats reverentially, Antz started it without even having a cellphone. “He used his friend’s phone! Now he’s got, like, the most known Instagram page!”) Antz messaged Mr. Austin, saying, “yo, you’re jokes.” Now Mr. Austin is signed to Antz’s imprint, WEAREBLK, an entity created specifically to avoid the pattern of established labels profiting off viral successes they had no hand in creating.So Mr. Austin is now officially, and accidentally but not accidentally, an independent musician. At an appearance at the taste-making Boiler Room Festival, he heard people sing his lyrics back to him for the first time. His tour with NSG took him to London and Birmingham and Manchester alongside “mad big artists.”“I felt so bad because all these artists put in so much time and I’m just like, ‘what is going on,’” he said. The juvenilia-fueled song made the rounds and even got back to his grandma. (He said she texted him about one of the more anatomically graphic lyrics.)Next up, hopefully, is some money. “My dad’s a builder and he doesn’t work right now, which is tough. And my mum’s a teacher in a special needs school. So pay off my parents debt, that’s the very first goal,” Mr. Austin said. “And after that it’s like — whatever. Literally tomorrow I could try beatboxing, and then, a year from now I could be a really famous beatboxer. Anything I wanna do, I’ll just do it. Cause there’s no reason for me not to do it. So I’ll do it.” Read the full article

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driveneed17-blog · 5 years ago

Text

XXX: Language

Hip-hop in South Korea has made it over to the mainstream, partly due to the massively popular music competition show “Show Me the Money,” which is like is like “X-Factor” with more hypebeasts in bucket hats. As the reality TV program has gained popularity, major Korean record labels have become more willing to invest in burgeoning rap stars instead of the typical idol or group. XXX’s Kim Ximya, who raps on top of production by the duo’s other half FRNK, has suggested that the commercialism of Korean rap has killed the authenticity of the genre, as it increasingly mirrors the formulaic nature of K-pop. “For most of the Korean rapper population, I feel they did not write about what they actually felt or what they were actually doing,” Kim said in an interview with Billboard. “They were making music they thought people would like to hear.”

On their debut album Language, XXX present themselves as the alternative to the sanitized, hyper-glossy rap music typically pumped out by the billion-dollar Korean music industry. If BTS are measured and subtle about their politics, XXX cuss in two different languages to get the point across. Kim launches invectives against the corporate K-pop machine, money-thirsty rappers, and oppressive standards of “success” (as defined by capitalism). He’s at his best when he’s absolutely seething with rage—a refreshing mode of delivery that doesn’t appear often in K-pop’s biggest hits.

“Y'all wanna know what the fuck hip-hop is?” Kim spits with vitriol on “S_it,” before he answers his own question: “Such luxury does not exist in Korea.” And although Kim’s intermittent English lyrics are sometimes clunky, they help non-Korean speakers get a sense of the themes he’s tackling here. It works best in “Sujak,” when he starts off by rapping in English: “Strip club/Casket/Body in that basket.” Kim charges the song with nihilistic energy before switching over to Korean to elaborate on living in a soul-sucking society that values money over people. It seems almost utilitarian, like how other K-pop stars add in random English interjections in order to appeal to as many international listeners as possible. But his bilingualism is more impressive in the moments when the shift is seamless and the two languages flow together, like when he rhymes Korean words with English ones and vice versa.

While Language repeatedly takes aim at the overwhelmingly high pressures of the Korean music industry, Kim’s rage never becomes monotone or boring. His frustrations are nuanced, as he portrays his internal conflict of wanting to succeed within the system that he’s actively trying to fight. On “Ugly,” Kim admits that he ascribes his self-worth to his success as an artist. “This ranking system and poverty is fucking my mentality/In the end, my music doesn’t reach the charts,” he raps. And on “What You Want,” he illustrates how easy it is to find himself slipping back into the capitalistic ethos. His train of thought begins to unravel: “Art is human/Human is greed/Ergo greed is money.” He snaps himself out of the cycle and starts over, until he inevitably finds himself talking about money yet again.

Since they’ve gained attention globally, Korean rappers have been accused of biting off their American counterparts and even “mocking” black culture. But XXX seek out their own identity by opting for dark, intense production that would fit in more at a warehouse rave than an upscale club, bolstering their anti-establishment attitude. On Language, FRNK veers towards Arca’s Stretch 2-era twisted experimental trap and leans into the bombast of Hudson Mohawke and Lunice’s TNGHT bangers. In a standout moment at the end of “S_it,” a fascinating breakdown chops up the sound of knives unsheathing with ominous plucks from the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument. Instead of lifting sounds from another scene, XXX take cues from their own culture and mash them up with weirder found sounds, proving that Korean rap can innovate, not just replicate.

XXX have lamented the fact that they’ve started to gain more recognition in America than in Korea. (Kim said: “I really wanted to break the system first back home.”) But they’ve carved out a space on the internet instead of on TV or venues in their native country, where the music industry might not want to champion two iconoclasts who don’t fit the status quo. Their exile from mainstream Korean rap and pop, of course, is why Language is such a thrill to listen to.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/xxx-language/

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technouk · 6 years ago

Photo

Everyman Superstar DJ Carl Cox On Techno, Ibiza, Burning Man And Life In The Fast Lane Carl Cox Photo credit Dan Reid Carl Cox has provided the soundtrack for some of the best nights out for millions of clubbers and music lovers all over the world. "Coxy," as he is affectionately known, is one of the most famous DJs on the planet. It is not every day one speaks to such an iconic figure, so in advance of our interview, I talked to a couple of experts to hear their thoughts. Author, DJ and techno editor at Mixmag, Marcus Golden Barnes, is glowing in his appraisal. "I love Carl! He has worked tirelessly to transmit his unwavering love for music to millions of people all over the world. He is always buoyant and positive, and clearly revels in his job every single time he plays. Carl is a remarkable character who lives for music, there's no superficial facade, just pure, sincere love and soul." Ministry Of Sound DJ, journalist and Ibiza stalwart Timmy Sheridan is renowned for deflating the pretensions of many a superstar DJ with his withering editorial putdowns, and is not a man to suffer pretenders gladly. His evaluation of Carl Cox is telling. "Everybody loves Carl. He is unique because you get a sense that absolutely everything you see is what you get. He's literally the only survivor of the process of becoming famous I can think of in our scene. He is utterly without guile, couldn't be less of a diva if he tried and most miraculous of all, still has a fully functioning sense of humor. On top of all this, he is an unwavering standard of excellence. He's never sold out, faked it or failed to deliver over something like 35 years. Few can say that, almost none in the UK." Sheridan continues, not without a sense of humor himself, "As a footnote, I should add, I also get the impression that if something broke, Carl would be the first one to know and to try to fix it. Most DJs can't even mix, never mind solder, splice or make a cabinet." Sheridan is probably not wrong, Cox worked in all aspects of the building trade before getting into DJing, he tells me by phone from his home in Australia. "My last job before I was a DJ was a scaffolder, and before that, I was a painter and decorator, and before that I was I was a builder's mate, a plasterer's mate and a chippy." Perhaps as a result of his unpretentious roots, Cox has always been alive to his opportunities with a clarity which might elude those with less varied life experience. "I know what it's like to be on the other side of the coin. I know what it's like to wait in a queue, to save up my money to go to an event, when I couldn't wait to hear the DJ play. I was right in the middle of the dance floor listening to the sound system with a big smile on my face, and dancing my ass off! Most DJs don't have that experience, most go straight into the DJ booth. But I was a clubber for a least 10 to 15 years before I was DJing. The only reason that I DJed was that - all the time I was dancing - the DJ wasn't really giving me what I wanted. So I thought, the only way I can do that is to do it myself. So that's what I did, I became a DJ." Carl Cox Photo (c) www.visionseven.co.uk After years of perfecting his craft alongside luminaries such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling, his big break came when he was invited to perform on three decks at a 1988 Sunrise event in Oxford at 10am. "Since that day I haven't looked back," he reflects. His motivation has remained constant, "I just always love the gift of sharing the love of music. If it moves me then hopefully it moves others." Cox describes the early rave scene as a "Woodstock" for his generation, and is delighted to see new generations embracing aspects of dance music culture, decades later. His distinctive smile behind the decks is a sight welcomed by clubbers of all ages, and one gets a sense that he is still genuinely grateful for every moment. This is no mean feat considering his career is one marked by tireless productivity. "It's taken me a long time to get to where I am," he admits. Cox has performed at over 5,000 events the last 30 years, that's over 166 times a year on average, a punishing schedule when one takes into account the travel needed between events. Cox was one of the first DJ/producers to have a chart hit with "I Want You (Forever)" in 1991, and has sold well over 100,000 records as a solo artist. His 1995 mix CD, 'F.A.C.T.,' set a new benchmark for techno, selling over 250,000 copies, while his label Intec has sold over 600,000 copies of their vinyl and digital releases combined. At the time of his last "Global" radio show, his listenership was a phenomenal 17 million people worldwide. With these staggering levels of reach and influence, Cox is, of course, aware of his role as an ambassador for the music he loves. But he speaks with a palpable enthusiasm when talking about supporting the next generation of techno stars. In particular, he name-checks two young artists signed to his label. "We have a lady called Anfisa Letyago and another guy called Vikthor, both making some really amazing music. Most people don't know these artists, but they are the 'now generation' putting out their own new music." Anfisa Letyago's recent Intec release "Catch The Spirit" is indeed a thunderously euphoric techno banger. One can see why Cox is so excited to be supporting this new wave of the music he loves. Cox is also increasingly involved with events as not just a headliner, but also as a curator. His involvement with the massive US dance music festival Ultra started by curating a relatively small "Carl Cox & Friends" tent which would hold around 2,500 people. The festival quickly had to upscale their allocation for his lineup, and today a purpose-built "Carl Cox Megastructure" holds up to 20,000 clubbers for his specially curated experiences. He admits that the music industry is more demanding now than ever, and DJ/producers also need to be able to perform their music live in order to survive. "People really need to see something tangible," he reflects, name-checking Paul Kalkbrenner, Stephan Bodzin and KiNK as exemplars of the art. The name Carl Cox is also synonymous with the clubbing scene of Ibiza. He has been there since its inception and reminisces fondly about the early days. "You always have certain years in life where it was the best. In the '80s none of the clubs had roofs, you danced under the stars, it was phenomenal. When those roofs went on the clubs, everything changed." Cox's 15-year residency at Ibiza venue Space helped to establish it as one of the most important club nights in the world. "Space was always a club which was a catalyst of how people felt about the island, because it was very much for the people who lived on the island, for the workers and also people who came to club. It had that Spanish feel about it. It was always a non-VIP orientated club, it was a dancefloor club for people who really wanted to have a great time." Cox is well placed to comment on the changes in the island's culture and ethos. "Today there is a VIP 'three-tier system' in most places, and DJs are playing more commercially to get more people in the clubs. It's all progression, it's nothing more than that." While he is pragmatic about the changing emphasis of Ibiza clubland, he is singularly unimpressed with new opportunities to buy overpriced sushi from star chefs. He remembers well being able to get beautiful locally-caught and cooked fish for 15 euros, and reflects on the loss of these simpler times on the island with a hint of sadness. "Well, it's disappeared, that whole idea now is gone. When people are flying in on a private jet or arriving in a superyacht, it's kind of taking away the true essence of what made Ibiza great in the first place." As this gradual transformation of Ibiza was underway, Cox made his first visit to the Burning Man festival in 2008. "As soon as I got onto the playa, I was a Burner, I was just into it." Cox found an opportunity for creative expression unlike anything he had experienced before. "I thought, this is something else, a gathering of like-minded people who go there to be creative, to gift in a way of being able to express themselves, from the biggest sculpture to the smallest detail of something meaningful." Now a regular Burning Man DJ, Cox still relishes the creative canvas, which he has chosen to paint purple in homage to one of his musical heroes. "I decided after three years that I wanted to build a camp at Burning Man, and to have The Purple Party in tribute to Prince. Everyone dressed in purple, and I just played Prince records and '80s music." These days, Cox is spending more time with another lifelong passion, motor racing. He started in 2013 by sponsoring the New Zealand-based sidecar team of his friend, Gavin Sokolich. When they zoomed to victory at the first championship that year, Cox recalls thinking "Wow, this is cool. I wonder what else we can do." True to his nature, Cox embraced the opportunity with gusto. He bought a racing bike, another sidecar, and revamped his team over the course to two infamously demanding Isle Of Man TT races. His team, CC Motorsport, finished in the top three of the TT races last year. Cox also sponsors 15-time Isle of Man TT winner Michael Dunlop, seven-time World Champion Tim Reeves and his passenger Mark Wilkes. He is also a partner in the boutique motorcycle restoration company TT Motorcycles, and obviously loves the work they do, bringing classic '80s Honda and Yamaha motorbikes back to pristine condition. After speaking at length about his teammates and colleagues, he mentions almost as an aside, "I also drag race myself. I have a Mark One Ford Capri, which is very very fast, over two thousand horsepower. It runs this quarter mile from seven seconds dead, at over 200 mph a quarter mile." As our conversation returns to his first love, Cox still speaks with the untainted enthusiasm of his teenage self, unselfconsciously "dancing his ass off" in the middle of the dance floor. He mentions forthcoming gigs at Tomorrowland and Space Ibiza On Tour, recent remixes for Matthew Bushwacker and Yothu Yindi, his Dr. Funk "El Rancho" remix, and his remake of "Dark Alleys". Throughout our entire conversation, his gratitude for his place in the world is obvious. "I'm so happy, I feel blessed and honored to be doing what I'm doing. At the end of the day I feel privileged to be able to be in this position, and to give you what you believe you should be getting from me as a DJ, but also as a person, because at the end of the day I'll have a beer with anyone, "I'll have a shot with everyone. I don't see myself any higher than anyone else." " There is some poetic justice in this self-effacing superstar DJ rising to the highest point in the dance music industry, using his position to inspire and support others, while indulging his passion for life in the fast lane and loving every sweet minute of it. By all accounts, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Carl Cox Photo by Dan Reid Carl Cox ‘Dark Alleys’ (Remixes) is out now via Circus Recordings. Carl Cox tour dates: Fri, JUN 14 - Kings Hall at Avant Gardner, Brooklyn, NY Sat, JUN 15 - Brooklyn Mirage, Brooklyn, NY Sun, JUN 16 - Olympic Stadium, Montréal, Canada Wed, JUN 19 - Ushuaa Beach Hotel, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUN 21 - Ciudad del Rock, Monteagudo Del Castillo, Spain Sat, JUN 22 - Marenostrum Fuengirola, Spain Wed, JUN 26 - Glastonbury Festival, Pilton Green, U.K. Thu, JUL 4 - Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia Sat, JUL 6 - Parco Dora, Piemont, Italy Sat, JUL 6 - Kappa Futur Festival, Turin, Italy Thu, JUL 11 - Stadion Poljud, Split, Croatia Fri, JUL 12 - DC10, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUL 19 - De Schorre Recreation Ground, Boom, Belgium Sun, JUL 21 - Poble Espanyol, Barcelona, Spain Fri, JUL 26 - Tomorrowland, Boom, Belgium Tue, JUL 30 - Privilege, Ibiza, Spain AUG 7-12 - Boomtown, Hampshire, U.K. For more live dates visit carlcox.com/tours " readability="191.56632781652"> Carl Cox has provided the soundtrack for some of the best nights out for millions of clubbers and music lovers all over the world. "Coxy," as he is affectionately known, is one of the most famous DJs on the planet. It is not every day one speaks to such an iconic figure, so in advance of our interview, I talked to a couple of experts to hear their thoughts. Author, DJ and techno editor at Mixmag, Marcus Golden Barnes, is glowing in his appraisal. "I love Carl! He has worked tirelessly to transmit his unwavering love for music to millions of people all over the world. He is always buoyant and positive, and clearly revels in his job every single time he plays. Carl is a remarkable character who lives for music, there's no superficial facade, just pure, sincere love and soul." Ministry Of Sound DJ, journalist and Ibiza stalwart Timmy Sheridan is renowned for deflating the pretensions of many a superstar DJ with his withering editorial putdowns, and is not a man to suffer pretenders gladly. His evaluation of Carl Cox is telling. "Everybody loves Carl. He is unique because you get a sense that absolutely everything you see is what you get. He's literally the only survivor of the process of becoming famous I can think of in our scene. He is utterly without guile, couldn't be less of a diva if he tried and most miraculous of all, still has a fully functioning sense of humor. On top of all this, he is an unwavering standard of excellence. He's never sold out, faked it or failed to deliver over something like 35 years. Few can say that, almost none in the UK." Sheridan continues, not without a sense of humor himself, "As a footnote, I should add, I also get the impression that if something broke, Carl would be the first one to know and to try to fix it. Most DJs can't even mix, never mind solder, splice or make a cabinet." Sheridan is probably not wrong, Cox worked in all aspects of the building trade before getting into DJing, he tells me by phone from his home in Australia. "My last job before I was a DJ was a scaffolder, and before that, I was a painter and decorator, and before that I was I was a builder's mate, a plasterer's mate and a chippy." Perhaps as a result of his unpretentious roots, Cox has always been alive to his opportunities with a clarity which might elude those with less varied life experience. "I know what it's like to be on the other side of the coin. I know what it's like to wait in a queue, to save up my money to go to an event, when I couldn't wait to hear the DJ play. I was right in the middle of the dance floor listening to the sound system with a big smile on my face, and dancing my ass off! Most DJs don't have that experience, most go straight into the DJ booth. But I was a clubber for a least 10 to 15 years before I was DJing. The only reason that I DJed was that - all the time I was dancing - the DJ wasn't really giving me what I wanted. So I thought, the only way I can do that is to do it myself. So that's what I did, I became a DJ." After years of perfecting his craft alongside luminaries such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling, his big break came when he was invited to perform on three decks at a 1988 Sunrise event in Oxford at 10am. "Since that day I haven't looked back," he reflects. His motivation has remained constant, "I just always love the gift of sharing the love of music. If it moves me then hopefully it moves others." Cox describes the early rave scene as a "Woodstock" for his generation, and is delighted to see new generations embracing aspects of dance music culture, decades later. His distinctive smile behind the decks is a sight welcomed by clubbers of all ages, and one gets a sense that he is still genuinely grateful for every moment. This is no mean feat considering his career is one marked by tireless productivity. "It's taken me a long time to get to where I am," he admits. Cox has performed at over 5,000 events the last 30 years, that's over 166 times a year on average, a punishing schedule when one takes into account the travel needed between events. Cox was one of the first DJ/producers to have a chart hit with "I Want You (Forever)" in 1991, and has sold well over 100,000 records as a solo artist. His 1995 mix CD, 'F.A.C.T.,' set a new benchmark for techno, selling over 250,000 copies, while his label Intec has sold over 600,000 copies of their vinyl and digital releases combined. At the time of his last "Global" radio show, his listenership was a phenomenal 17 million people worldwide. With these staggering levels of reach and influence, Cox is, of course, aware of his role as an ambassador for the music he loves. But he speaks with a palpable enthusiasm when talking about supporting the next generation of techno stars. In particular, he name-checks two young artists signed to his label. "We have a lady called Anfisa Letyago and another guy called Vikthor, both making some really amazing music. Most people don't know these artists, but they are the 'now generation' putting out their own new music." Anfisa Letyago's recent Intec release "Catch The Spirit" is indeed a thunderously euphoric techno banger. One can see why Cox is so excited to be supporting this new wave of the music he loves. Cox is also increasingly involved with events as not just a headliner, but also as a curator. His involvement with the massive US dance music festival Ultra started by curating a relatively small "Carl Cox & Friends" tent which would hold around 2,500 people. The festival quickly had to upscale their allocation for his lineup, and today a purpose-built "Carl Cox Megastructure" holds up to 20,000 clubbers for his specially curated experiences. He admits that the music industry is more demanding now than ever, and DJ/producers also need to be able to perform their music live in order to survive. "People really need to see something tangible," he reflects, name-checking Paul Kalkbrenner, Stephan Bodzin and KiNK as exemplars of the art. The name Carl Cox is also synonymous with the clubbing scene of Ibiza. He has been there since its inception and reminisces fondly about the early days. "You always have certain years in life where it was the best. In the '80s none of the clubs had roofs, you danced under the stars, it was phenomenal. When those roofs went on the clubs, everything changed." Cox's 15-year residency at Ibiza venue Space helped to establish it as one of the most important club nights in the world. "Space was always a club which was a catalyst of how people felt about the island, because it was very much for the people who lived on the island, for the workers and also people who came to club. It had that Spanish feel about it. It was always a non-VIP orientated club, it was a dancefloor club for people who really wanted to have a great time." Cox is well placed to comment on the changes in the island's culture and ethos. "Today there is a VIP 'three-tier system' in most places, and DJs are playing more commercially to get more people in the clubs. It's all progression, it's nothing more than that." While he is pragmatic about the changing emphasis of Ibiza clubland, he is singularly unimpressed with new opportunities to buy overpriced sushi from star chefs. He remembers well being able to get beautiful locally-caught and cooked fish for 15 euros, and reflects on the loss of these simpler times on the island with a hint of sadness. "Well, it's disappeared, that whole idea now is gone. When people are flying in on a private jet or arriving in a superyacht, it's kind of taking away the true essence of what made Ibiza great in the first place." As this gradual transformation of Ibiza was underway, Cox made his first visit to the Burning Man festival in 2008. "As soon as I got onto the playa, I was a Burner, I was just into it." Cox found an opportunity for creative expression unlike anything he had experienced before. "I thought, this is something else, a gathering of like-minded people who go there to be creative, to gift in a way of being able to express themselves, from the biggest sculpture to the smallest detail of something meaningful." Now a regular Burning Man DJ, Cox still relishes the creative canvas, which he has chosen to paint purple in homage to one of his musical heroes. "I decided after three years that I wanted to build a camp at Burning Man, and to have The Purple Party in tribute to Prince. Everyone dressed in purple, and I just played Prince records and '80s music." These days, Cox is spending more time with another lifelong passion, motor racing. He started in 2013 by sponsoring the New Zealand-based sidecar team of his friend, Gavin Sokolich. When they zoomed to victory at the first championship that year, Cox recalls thinking "Wow, this is cool. I wonder what else we can do." True to his nature, Cox embraced the opportunity with gusto. He bought a racing bike, another sidecar, and revamped his team over the course to two infamously demanding Isle Of Man TT races. His team, CC Motorsport, finished in the top three of the TT races last year. Cox also sponsors 15-time Isle of Man TT winner Michael Dunlop, seven-time World Champion Tim Reeves and his passenger Mark Wilkes. He is also a partner in the boutique motorcycle restoration company TT Motorcycles, and obviously loves the work they do, bringing classic '80s Honda and Yamaha motorbikes back to pristine condition. After speaking at length about his teammates and colleagues, he mentions almost as an aside, "I also drag race myself. I have a Mark One Ford Capri, which is very very fast, over two thousand horsepower. It runs this quarter mile from seven seconds dead, at over 200 mph a quarter mile." As our conversation returns to his first love, Cox still speaks with the untainted enthusiasm of his teenage self, unselfconsciously "dancing his ass off" in the middle of the dance floor. He mentions forthcoming gigs at Tomorrowland and Space Ibiza On Tour, recent remixes for Matthew Bushwacker and Yothu Yindi, his Dr. Funk "El Rancho" remix, and his remake of "Dark Alleys". Throughout our entire conversation, his gratitude for his place in the world is obvious. "I'm so happy, I feel blessed and honored to be doing what I'm doing. At the end of the day I feel privileged to be able to be in this position, and to give you what you believe you should be getting from me as a DJ, but also as a person, because at the end of the day I'll have a beer with anyone, "I'll have a shot with everyone. I don't see myself any higher than anyone else." " There is some poetic justice in this self-effacing superstar DJ rising to the highest point in the dance music industry, using his position to inspire and support others, while indulging his passion for life in the fast lane and loving every sweet minute of it. By all accounts, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Carl Cox ‘Dark Alleys’ (Remixes) is out now via Circus Recordings. Carl Cox tour dates: Fri, JUN 14 - Kings Hall at Avant Gardner, Brooklyn, NY Sat, JUN 15 - Brooklyn Mirage, Brooklyn, NY Sun, JUN 16 - Olympic Stadium, Montréal, Canada Wed, JUN 19 - Ushuaa Beach Hotel, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUN 21 - Ciudad del Rock, Monteagudo Del Castillo, Spain Sat, JUN 22 - Marenostrum Fuengirola, Spain Wed, JUN 26 - Glastonbury Festival, Pilton Green, U.K. Thu, JUL 4 - Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia Sat, JUL 6 - Parco Dora, Piemont, Italy Sat, JUL 6 - Kappa Futur Festival, Turin, Italy Thu, JUL 11 - Stadion Poljud, Split, Croatia Fri, JUL 12 - DC10, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUL 19 - De Schorre Recreation Ground, Boom, Belgium Sun, JUL 21 - Poble Espanyol, Barcelona, Spain Fri, JUL 26 - Tomorrowland, Boom, Belgium Tue, JUL 30 - Privilege, Ibiza, Spain AUG 7-12 - Boomtown, Hampshire, U.K. For more live dates visit carlcox.com/tours Read More

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

What Happens When You Get Famous Off One Song?

“I don’t want to sound bigheaded,” he said, “but I knew it would do bits.” (Translation: Mr. Austin knew the song would connect widely.)

The result was “Mary Berry,” a delightful, deadpan ode to life in small-town Britain. The title is a nod to the 84-year-old former “Great British Bake Off” co-host. In the song, Mr. Austin says he “needs a girl like” Ms. Berry; he defeats a local man in badminton; pulls out a secret Android cellphone; performs his own circumcision; threatens to fight the TV host Piers Morgan; flexes his discount Slazenger sneakers; and announces, “Top thing on my bucket list is to slide tackle the Queen.” For his rap alter-ego he borrowed the name Niko Bellic, an Eastern European gangster character from the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

As Mr. Austin later wrote on Instagram: “I decided to make a song within like 2 days and then 3 weeks later I signed a deal for it, now it’s 2mil+ streams across 3 platforms CRUUUD.”

This success seems both calculated and hilariously accidental. In the intro to the song, he offhandedly shouts out the flashy East London afrobeats group NSG; not long after its release, he was touring Britain as their opening act. He’s taking meetings and other “bits and bobs,” Mr. Austin said, and carefully planning a second single with a record label. He is now 19.

In 2016, 13-year-old Billie Eilish posted the song “Ocean Eyes” on her SoundCloud and went to bed. She woke up to see it had accumulated thousands of plays overnight. She is now one of the biggest pop stars alive.

The 16-year-old rapper Bhad Bhabie has built her career off a catchphrase-minting “Dr. Phil” appearance. The 13-year-old country singer Mason Ramsey has capitalized well off a recorded Walmart yodeling session. Their sudden, culture-saturating music moments would have been impossible before SoundCloud, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Now the music industry, social media and the influence industry at large are racing to adapt for, and borrow from, such overnight success stories.

Tom Austin — or Niko B, for that matter, as he’s now calling himself, possibly to avoid litigation — is nowhere near as well known as Bhad Bhabie or Billie Eilish. His success, to date, is very much niche, and contained within Britain. But he’s at a crossroads each saw for themselves. He made a song. It did bits. What’s next?

Getting Down on Friday

“It took me years to get healed,” she said in a recent interview. “When you’re 13, nobody can explain to you how mentally extreme everything is.”

Back then, she had vague dreams of Broadway, but no real career plan. In the years after “Friday,” she fended off all kinds of cynical business entreaties.

Now at 22, she’s built a team around her that she trusts. And she’s back making music: “Sweetheart,” her latest release, is available on all streaming platforms. She’s also talking about her experience, and getting very positive reactions.

“I had to figure out the long and hard way that nobody can give you this career,” Ms. Black said. “I had to do it in my own way.”

In the years since “Friday,” it’s possible audiences have become less judgmental.

While there’s still a bit of stigma associated with sudden virality, especially when it feels easily won, maybe we understand now that tunes can come from anywhere. Maybe we got tired of getting upset.

Or maybe the latest generation got better at being ready. In the end, Bhad Bhabie has bangers. Mason Ramsey is a legit country radio presence. And Lil Nas X’s path to success was, on a much grander scale, similar to Tom Austin’s. He used meme knowledge and a social media base to turn “Old Town Road” into the longest-running No. 1 single in Billboard history.

Ms. Black, as a pioneer, had no idea what was about to hit her. Teen creators now live knowing that any given thing they post might just change their life.

Crafting the Second Single on the Poets Estate

And the rest of the time — “deffo, 100 percent” — he was on the internet. At 8 or 9, that meant building Lego animations on YouTube. (“Like, a skeleton horse chasing a guy,” Mr. Austin said.) By 14 or 15, it was prank calls and mock news channel stuff. He managed to build up a bit of a YouTube following, then switched his attention to Instagram, where he first posted cool-guy fit pics before having a revelation.

“Mate, if I’m just showing you what I’m wearing, that’s not gonna get me anywhere. This is Instagram. You can’t deep it,” Mr. Austin said, meaning “take it seriously.” So he pivoted and started posting stuff like “me looking in the mirror, and in the mirror is this really buff guy,” he said. “It was the right turn to make.”

Around the same time, inspired by the multi-hyphenate talent Tyler, the Creator, he introduced a clothing label called Crowd; he now sells to customers as far as Dubai. He used to work at a Subway, but quit when a Crowd pop-up netted him more money in one weekend than he’d previously made in a month. He even wrote an elaborate resignation letter: “Thanks to everyone even Carlos bye Marisa I hope I can transfer my sandwich making skills to my future day to day life.”

As much as anything, “Mary Berry” was a promo for Crowd. (The video is full of Crowd clothes, and a post-video drop was his best-selling to date.) But it was also born of a generational D.I.Y. ethos: Why not do it?

Mr. Austin points to Alex From Glasto, a fellow pasty British teen who won viral fame last summer when he was pulled onstage at Glastonbury by the rapper Dave to perform the hit “Thiago Silva.” Since then, Alex From Glasto has released his own single. “I was like, ‘No offense to him, but if this guy can blow up …” Mr. Austin said, trailing off.

The making and release of “Mary Berry” was tied — breathlessly, naturally — with Instagram documentation: edited fake DMs from Drake asking to get on the remix, surreal footage of Mr. Austin surrounded by a platoon of life-size Mary Berry cardboard cutouts. “I did a video of me throwing a basketball out a window and then the Lakers being like ‘yo, we need to sign you right now,’” he said. The first Instagram Story tracking the journey is just captioned “about to become a full time rapper.”

He also got friends who are big on Instagram, like @GullyGuyLeo, to post a snippet of the song.

Then he landed attention of @ImJustBait, an influential British meme account run by a slick operator named Antz. (According to lore that Mr. Austin repeats reverentially, Antz started it without even having a cellphone. “He used his friend’s phone! Now he’s got, like, the most known Instagram page!”) Antz messaged Mr. Austin, saying, “yo, you’re jokes.” Now Mr. Austin is signed to Antz’s imprint, WEAREBLK, an entity created specifically to avoid the pattern of established labels profiting off viral successes they had no hand in creating.

So Mr. Austin is now officially, and accidentally but not accidentally, an independent musician. At an appearance at the taste-making Boiler Room Festival, he heard people sing his lyrics back to him for the first time. His tour with NSG took him to London and Birmingham and Manchester alongside “mad big artists.”

“I felt so bad because all these artists put in so much time and I’m just like, ‘what is going on,’” he said. The juvenilia-fueled song made the rounds and even got back to his grandma. (He said she texted him about one of the more anatomically graphic lyrics.)

Next up, hopefully, is some money. “My dad’s a builder and he doesn’t work right now, which is tough. And my mum’s a teacher in a special needs school. So pay off my parents debt, that’s the very first goal,” Mr. Austin said. “And after that it’s like — whatever. Literally tomorrow I could try beatboxing, and then, a year from now I could be a really famous beatboxer. Anything I wanna do, I’ll just do it. Cause there’s no reason for me not to do it. So I’ll do it.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/what-happens-when-you-get-famous-off-one-song/

#Event

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

KESHA FT. BIG FREEDIA - RAISING HELL

[6.38]

Kesha with Big Freedia Energy

Leah Isobel: Kesha has been saddled with one of the heaviest narratives of 2010s pop music, which combines uneasily with her career-long interest in more grounded country and rock signifiers. Now when she works with those impulses, as she did on Rainbow, the effect is one of refutation; Animal becomes an outlier that she made against her will, one that doesn't represent the Real Kesha. To work her way back to the party music that made her reputation, she has to adapt it to the new narrative frame that surrounds everything she does. If she's having fun, she's having fun in spite of what she experienced; partying is no longer an end into itself, but an escape from something else. Hence, "Raising Hell" deploys one of the hackiest pop tropes - gospel choirs used as a shortcut for sincere emotion - married to a pretty decent Big Freedia drop. It's not awful, but I miss the actual, honest-to-god trashiness that she made her stock in trade. In 2019, I guess I'm the only one. [6]

Thomas Inskeep: Finally, an uptempo Kesha record that a) isn't touched by the evil Dr. Luke, and b) doesn't sound like the result of a three-day vodka-and-Red Bull bender, and c) is actually fun. I'm not a fan of the EDM horns in the chorus, but apart from those, this works. I'm a bigger fan of Big Freedia in theory than practice, and accordingly prefer her in small doses; she's quite effective here as a kind of DJ Khaled-esque hype-person. And Kesha sounds free and happy, which makes me happy. [7]

Kayla Beardslee: I'm glad Kesha got her balls back and all, but I'm not enthused that that means a return to honking 2012 pop-drops. I will admit, though -- the combined Kesha/Freedia "drop it down low" hook grows on me with every listen. The rest of the song is fine: it invites singing along and is fun in a hedonistic Ke$ha way, but it's also very, very noisy (lots of erratic shouts and claps in the background that, to me, lean more messy than energetic). My favorite part is the final chorus ("Can I get an amen"), which is a pleasantly melodic contrast to the rest of the track, a close second being the thrilling "aaugh!" Kesha does right before the second chorus. [6]

Alex Clifton: High Road appears to take the party-all-day spirit from Kesha's earlier work but mixed with the rawer, more down-to-earth material from Rainbow. In theory this is a dream come true, and there's so much about "Raising Hell" that makes it a joy to experience. The post-chorus is godawful, though. Tonally it doesn't fit and stalls the song from its natural flow. I'm also longing for the day that Big Freedia gets the feature she deserves: her appearance is mostly limited to drop-it-drop-it-drop-it-drop-it which is delivered well but also literally one-note. Kesha's trying to have it all ways she can--country and gospel and dance and bounce--which, as someone who likes a good genreproof song, I really respect. Unfortunately the whole package doesn't come together as fully as it could. [6]

Stephen Eisermann: "The best possible Andy Grammer single" is not what Kesha and Big Freedia should be collaborating on. This is a waste of time and talent and no amount of conviction from either participant can convince me otherwise. [4]

Alfred Soto: This sounds sacrilegious: instead of defiling a religion, it defiles my idea of Kesha. After proving herself up to thumbing her nose at any genre she experimented with, she acquiesces to gospel cliches. She's earned the right to want salvation in them, lord knows, but she needn't sound as if Julia Michaels was her pastor. [4]

Josh Buck: How do you have a hook like "I don't wanna go to heaven without raising hell" and video centered around prosperity gospel preachers and NOT make it a country song?? At this point, Kesha has proven that she can tackle a variety of genres, but this bounce effort just feels scattered instead of celebratory. I realize this a loaded statement and not at all meant to be a defense or endorsement of the man, but judging by Kim Petras' endless recent string of bangers, Dr. Luke may have been an irreplaceable ingredient in Kesha's more crowd pleasing, debauched pop efforts. In recent years, she's sound much stronger on her Struts and Eagles of Death Metal rock cuts, and i'd love to see her spend more time in that arena. This one reminds me a bit of the final album by The Donnas in terms of we-might-be-too-old-for-this vibes. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: The narrative, inevitable and damning, around Kesha was that in severing her ties to Dr. Luke, she lost her source of a signature sound. Rainbow, with its grabs at musical styles and Kesha's required-for-optics but personality-dampening show of penitence, didn't do much to dislodge it. Which is why "Raising Hell" is such a triumph: it's evidence that she was the source of her signature sound. The song feels massive; if sound alone determines a hit, this would be No. 1 everywhere. The hook is recognizably hers: a melody that's kin to "We R Who We R" and also to hymns. The drops r what they r; the interpolations are canny and nostalgia: an interlude of "My Neck, My Back" filtered through "Hollaback Girl," an interlude of preaching filtered through Prince. Freedia is incapable of sounding like she's phoning it in even when she is (I'm sure she'll do a lot of that in the next few years), and unlike Iggy Pop or the Eagles of Death Metal, she's an actually exciting guest pick, rather than one mostly exciting on paper to boomers. And throughout, Kesha recaptures the anarchic glee that made her career. [8]

Jonathan Bogart: Maybe it was my naïveté in 2010 that made her sound so recklessly out of step with the rest of pop; but her post-Luke music, however much better it has been for her soul, still sounds faintly like capitulation. The secular-gospel structure and chantalong melody followed by jump around breakdowns sound like every pseudo-celebration on the market: the saving grace is Freedia's booming authoritativeness (surely the angel Gabriel, when he tells the roll up yonder to drop it down low, sounds like her) and Kesha's impish use of language, dancing on the borders between sacrilege and piety, hooks it up to the great stream of American song, where there is no Sunday morning without a Saturday night. [8]

Kylo Nocom: Of all things, this reminds me of Vacation Bible School theme songs and the "Cheerleader" remix. I have scored this accordingly. [7]

Michael Hong: The bombast of early 2010s Ke$ha meets the soulful Kesha of Rainbow racing down that same road to self-empowerment. Ke$ha's talk-singing, a choir that makes a line like "bitch, I'm blessed" all the more enjoyable, drops mixed with the gospel influences, and Big Freedia's bounce make for a hell of a maximalist fantasy. [7]

Jackie Powell: When "Raising Hell" begins, it fools the listener. When the piano chords and Kesha's introductory vocalization grace my ears during the song's first five seconds, I'm convinced that a power ballad or at best a mid-tempo track is in store. But Kesha quickly changes direction. An explosion of camp from collaborator Big Freedia, a blaring saxophone in the chorus, the return of talk-singing in the verses and an epic build in the pre-chorus: it sounds very familiar. That's what Kesha wants. She wants us to feel like we are once again at a 21-century hoedown. (But without Pitbull this time.) On this track, Kesha proves that both she and her fans can be "animals" while simultaneously being people with "fantastic souls", which might have been something missing from the pre-Rainbow eras. Here, however, Kesha desires fun and a rebellion that are a rejection of evil behavior and suffocating authority figures. She's not just sticking it to the man without a purpose. That's the difference between Kesha of 2019 and Ke$ha of 2009. "Kesha got her balls back and they're bigger than ever," she said in the album trailer for High Road. But I don't agree with that. She's had them since her inception. Her evolution has been honest, which is something that not all artists can say. [7]

Isabel Cole: MY! GIRL! Having proven herself an actual musician to every idiot man in the country, Kesha (perhaps sick of being so serious) gleefully returns to her favorite stomping ground of, well, glee. Raising Hell makes text what has always been the implicit mission of the Kesha project: a commitment to the fundamental sacredness of joy. It's hard to imagine a more succinct encapsulation of her ethos than "I'm all fucked up in my Sunday best / no walk of shame cuz I love this dress": it's not that she takes no pleasure in the transgression of elevating ass-shaking to the level of the divine, but it's a gentle mischief born of the deep belief in the holiness of enjoying our corporeal gifts while we still can. Feeling good is a form of worship, and a killer beat is no less legitimate an access point than a hymn. When she combines markers of religiosity with artifacts of base delights (my favorite is "Solo cup full of holy spirits," although I also adore the the vulgarity of "bounce it up and down where the good Lord split it"), the point is not to revel in contradiction but to toast to the fact that there is no contradiction; and when she opens her scope in the coda, dedicating her preaching or perhaps this round of shots to the misfits of creation, there's a (frankly Piscean) generosity to it. Also, (1) it slaps (2) biiiiiiiiiiiiiitch I'm blessed (3) her voice sounds just wonderful, as dextrous with an implicit smirk as ever and with a thrilling power on the places she gets to soar; I love the bit of grit we get in the chorus, like she's singing this after a night out (4) it FUCKING slaps (5) "I'm still here still, still bringing it to ya": ten years since TiK ToK this month, and the party still don't start till she walks in. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Kesha #Big Freedia #pop #music #music review #writing

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tgr489 · 5 years ago

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The road trip

My planned road trip has been postponed and will more than likely happen when we go to burning man now. The prospect of riding across the country a little daunting on my Daytona, mainly because of the comfort issue. Harv and I did end up on the road as it were but only to Albany, or just outside of, to pick up a new car for him, a nice beemer Z4M coupe. We left early to miss traffic and were out of the city pretty swiftly settling into a nice leisurely drive. It wasn’t long before he started grilling me about my ex-boss and the escapades from the previous weekend we’d caught up. Talked it out with how things came to pass and the what happened. He admonished me not to get involved in that situation, but I told him it was cool and that nothing serious was gonna come of it and that it was just a casual thing. He did say that he thought she was cool but not really my type and that I should’ve stayed with Sky. That wasn’t feasible for many reasons and all he could do was moan at me when I mentioned she had a boyfriend already. Told me to stop being such a playa, which I don’t think I am, not to the level he imagines anyway. All I could say was that all’s fair in love and war and everyone is fair game as far as I was concerned, although I’m starting to move away from that ethos following my recent episode. The rest of the journey was relatively non conversational and apart from my affirmations of a good track playing and him asking me to skin up we kept it fairly brief. Car journeys always seem to do that.

We arrived at the guy’s place who was selling the car, a bit of a middle aged dude who didn’t somehow suit the ride he was parting with. Someone had probably told him as much, well a good friend would’ve I’m sure. At $15k it did seem a bit too cheap for what it was, but apparently the electrics were a little fried which is why. That could be expensive to sort out but Harv didn’t seem too put off by it, so after a bit of a test drive the cash was handed over. I chanced my arm and asked if I was driving back his car, to which he gave me a stern ‘Fuck off’. It was worth a shot. His car is an amazing Holden Minaro, which I don’t think anyone has driven except him. Pretty selfish really, if it was mine I’d share it out to him. Never mind, the Beemer was still an awesome ride and I had secretly been looking forward to driving it back, I wouldn’t have come if it had been a shitter.

I got in the car and fired it up and the first realisation was the stereo didn’t work. Oh well that’s the way it goes sometimes. I found a suitable playlist that would get me in the zone and casually pulled out of the driveway and pulled alongside Harv. ‘See you back at yours then?’ ‘Yeah. Don’t go too crazy, OK?’ Concern morphing across his face. ‘Of course. I bet you a Benjamin I beat you by an hour,’ were the last words spoken before I burned off down the street with the back end of the car snaking around. Fuck it was fun to drive and I had it sideways more than a few times on the semi quiet streets before the freeway. Was good to get that out of my system this side of the journey because it would never happen back in the city. I kept the speed to the limit for the first couple of Ks, getting used to the cruise of the car while I had a banger. That was when I realised another fault, the windows wouldn’t go back up. It wasn’t a problem to begin with but once I had the car upwards of 170kph the drumming of the wind resistance through the cockpit was painful on the eardrums and I had to have the volume of my pod up pretty high to drown it out. Either way the car was blinding fun to drive and was like a little go kart. I will get the chance to take it out again before it goes to the shop so will see about getting my GoPros on the front and on the dash to get some good footage. By the time I hit the outer city I figured I had maybe 40mins on Harv, my saving grace would be him getting caught in the slightly later traffic, because there was no way I’d make up the time with the distance I had left. I parked up at his, took a photo of the car with his building behind and sent to him, recording the time for us both. I sat in the car and had another banger then went for food.

He arrived back 4 fucking hours later! After the first hour I moved to the deli and ended up talking to 2 old geezers for about an hour, but after they went I was left looking at my phone for the remainder. No apology either when he arrived, just said he stopped for food then ran an errand. I was pissed but not convincingly. He let me into his place so I could get my bike and on the way out he paid me my winnings and thanked me for the help, giving me a bone crushing hug in the process. We agreed to catch up soon but neither of us gave dates so we’ll see.

I had the speed bug in me still and rode like a crazy man all the way home, weaving and dodging my way through the traffic and people. And right when I was turning from Mercer to Prince I got caught off guard by a familiar face in the street, so I turned to verify who I thought it was and ploughed into the side of a cab, fortunately not straight on so I was actually able to stay on the bike and ride alongside the driver’s window for a while. There was no way I was stopping because I didn’t want the woman who’d distracted me to see, and she would’ve done as she was heading in that direction, so I took off quickly and rode up Wooster the wrong way to prevent the cabbie from following, if he was. I decided to stay out and went and sat in the park. Over a banger I called Jase to see how he was doing, which was good. It’s funny how you don’t see someone for weeks and that’s all that people can boil it down to. All he told me about were his house renovations, which sounded interesting but I had no idea about half the shit he was spouting so just kept going uh huh, yep, cool. Maybe if I go to his sometime soon I’ll understand what he’s on about. Then my phone died so I went home. It was dark and I was tired. When I got in Lucy was the only one home. She confirmed to me I’d had a visitor and passed me the note she’d left. Elise was in town for the week and wanted to meet me tomorrow morning. I sent her a message saying ‘OK, where?’ Her reply of ‘the Bowery’ was fairly immediate. I softened and replied telling her I’d be there by 10. Luce asked me what was up with that so I told her all about what had been going on, my ultimatum and stuff. She asked if I was still interested in her but I didn’t know, some of me does but I can’t put the lies behind me, but I do want to. She said we should have some wine, so we did. She said if I truly loved her as much as I did I would find a way and make it work. Told her that’s what I’m trying to figure out. She said I should figure it out pretty damn quick because if she has decided to upsticks and move here and I wasn’t interested it was bang out of order, not only for her but the kid in tow. I knew she was right. I didn’t want to talk about it any more so we sat together on the couch and finished the vino watching Blades of Glory. Oh what to do…

Later Gator

#bmw #bmwz4m #road trip #albany #the bet #benjamin franklin #killing time #accident #speed demon #speed #minaro #electric windows #taxi #life story #life stories #life of riley

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chorusfm · 6 years ago

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A Day to Remember – Homesick

For as long as I can recall, A Day to Remember have been that strange mixture of incredibly divisive and inarguably popular within the scene. Being a (female) ADTR fan in 2009 looked like this: If people (let’s be real; mostly men) weren’t calling you “soft” for liking the band to begin with, they were heavily implying that you only liked the ~pretty~ tracks, like “If It Means a Lot to You” or “Have Faith In Me” (which are both bangers, by the way). The band apparently were too hardcore for the pop punk bros, and too pop punk for the hardcore kids. To put a finer and entirely subjective point on that observation: then as now, both the pop-punk and hardcore purists were enraged by a band that refuses to call themselves either, yet excels at both. When Homesick dropped ten years ago, I was a senior in high school. While they weren’t my absolute favorite band, they were up there. I wasn’t writing about music yet at the time, but I loved the record. Upon listening as a fully formed adult ten years later, my opinion remains largely unchanged. The first thing that strikes me is how well this record has aged. Its sound – at least, amongst the places where hardcore and pop punk intersect – could have been released today. At the same time, the songs in retrospect listen like a time capsule of sorts. They hold up as a perfect example of where the scene’s music was at the time – a microcosm that takes every existing element and represents it perfectly, while never fully committing to it. That’s the apparent ethos of A Day to Remember, and you can hear it on each track: the reason for their popularity and the reason for their divisiveness are one and the same. They are no more willing to subscribe to the mindset of the clique-ish purists of hardcore than they are to the quirky “I hate this town” ethos of pop punk, despite dabbling in and mastering both sounds. I can honestly see why it’s aggravating to some; it’s sort of like that one kid everyone knew in school who didn’t obsess over your favorite subject the way you did, but always seemed to have the right answers in class. Thematically, Homesick revolves around several recurring points: pressures of the music industry, realities of life on the road, revenge on those who’ve wronged you and internal struggles with sense of identity/being true to oneself. Throughout the years, McKinnon has demonstrated his incredibly underrated prowess as a lyricist. Nowhere is this more evident on this record than on tracks like “Another Song About the Weekend” or the album’s namesake, “Homesick.” Perhaps that’s why the deluxe version featured acoustic versions of those two tracks in particular. While not my favorite effort from the band in the year 2019, it’s easy to listen to it and hear how it was the launching point for everything that followed it in the past decade, culminating for this listener in 2013’s liberation-from-Victory-Records-testimonial Common Courtesy. Everything else aside, I’m hard-pressed to think of many other albums that had so many memorable moments (meme-orable?) that had very little to do with the actual music – from the cough in “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of” to the gang vocals-turned punch line that open the record to the meme-ready ‘Disrespect your surroundings’ on “Mr. Highway’s Thinking About the End”, this album is serves not only as a flawless embodiment of damn near every scene trend of its time, but as something that still today is recognizable even beyond the band’s considerable fanbase. If that doesn’t make something iconic, what does? --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/review/a-day-to-remember-homesick/

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therotationblog-blog · 7 years ago

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4:44 v DAMN

As an un-apologetic Hip-Hop Purist, writing this editorial was the hardest thing I’ve had to do – but it’s so necessary. 4:44 vs DAMN. Jay-Z ,undisputedly the greatest Rap artist alive released his 13th studio album just 77 days after the quintessential rap prodigy, Kendrick Lamar dropped his 4th. As summer comes to a close, the only questions in my mind (besides which day parties i should be taking off of work for) is which album is hotter and which one will leave a greater impact on the culture

Obviously the latter question is harder to speak on, but I will make my projections. For now lets break this thing down from cover, to roll-out. Cover For me this is an easy early win for the kid K. Dot. Standing in front of bricks represents his hard past. In Hip Hop, the term/icon “bricks” owns multiple meanings from drugs, to money, to Newark, New Jersey, etc. So the symbolism is palpable. The red painted bricks, which we also see in the font DAMN, put the viewer on alert (and unintentionally signals Compton blood ties). But we can’t forget the stare. `I think this is the generational look of “I'se tired.” This cover depicts the plague known as the common man’s struggle. Unfortunately, 4:44 holds back all punches with its warm, autumn toned, well-centered, easy to read font. Did we mention its Jay-Z’s 13th studio album? Jay Z 0 Kendrick 1 Opening Song Kill Jay Z (2:58) So the first thing Jay Z does is flat out order a hit on himself, and provide reasons why. Then turns the gun (likely a draco) on his little brother Kanye ($-20 M).This is right before Hov explains the time he got stuck in an elevator, through a random Eric Benet metaphor, about a mismanaged relationship with Halle Berry 12 years ago. Kill Jay Z is more a prophecy of what people will want to do to Jigga once they hear how he really feels. 10/10 Blood (1:58) “Is it wickedness … . is it weakness?” That pause built so much anticipation. This is an old Hov trick though, when you’re great you make them wait on you. Blood is an amazing intro to set the stage for DAMN, but I would describe this first track as more like a vivid poem then a banger. All in all, this was a layup from Kendrick to start the album. 9/10 Jay Z 1 Kendrick 1 #1 Single 4:44 (4:44) Have you ever seen a grown man cry? If not, this song is basically the same thing. I don’t think anyone has ever been so transparent in hip hop, ever. Jay’s transparency about some really terrible things he’s done some how comes off as noble and deeply insightful. Content wise, any music junkie will spend the next few months of their life unpacking these lyrics 10/10. Humble (2:57) I believe this is Kendrick’s first true single. I mean that in the sense that he blended his raw artistry and commercial appeal into a cohesive anthem. By no stretch of the imagination is this a lyrical masterpiece, but this single amplifies Lamar’s ability to evoke emotion through only a few words and cadences. 9/10

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#2 Single

Bam (3:54) This song is an allude to the classic Blueprint series. While everyone now is trying to find their island/calypso vibe, Hov punches a hole in the wall andactually features a real reggae artist. Bam is basically Brooklyn’s labor day parade wrapped inside an mp3. And for kicks, Jay flashes his GOAT card with bar after bar of platinum level boasting. 9/10

DNA (3:05) Another genius blend of lyrical content and a rallying cry. Sonically bold and abrasive, the lyrics paint a softer picture. It asks each of its listeners to look within themselves and identify who they are. Then urges us to take a closer look at those whom we may be idolizing (ahem Drake). Whether you relate or not to what’s in K. Dot’s DNA, anyone who listens can feel this song strike a tribal awakening. 10/10

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Top Visuals

The Story of O.J. (4:16 ) So there’s a KKK factory in this video, then one of the klannies takes their hoods off and he’s “still nigga”. If you haven’t seen the video don’t worry there are plenty more mind blowing metaphors to drop your jaw at. From burning crosses, to O.J. satire and walking back to Brooklyn on the bridge, this video addresses a lot. In a really Inception like manner, my only critique of the video is its main charm. The fact its a cartoon.. I feel people will overlook the deeper meaning of each scene, but it would be nearly impossible to live act all these scenes (under budget). Without creating anymore of a contradiction let me say this video and song combo are like Tom n Jerry, met the Wire. In the good kind of way. 9/10

Loyalty (4:00) This video treatment is Oscar worthy. Based on cinematics and effects alone, Dave Meyers produced a truly stunning visual product. My critique for the video is that the storyline could have been more original. I get the story, he and Rih Rih are a new Bonnie Clyde. She gets him to fight the latino guy, joy rides the whip and then the latin mafia come for revenge. I’m pretty sure he crashes the car and goes all Kung Fu Kenny before he gets plastic bagged. The video is a little confusing, but who cares the visuals are pupil therapy. More Dave Meyers please. 9/10

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Production

As easy as Kendrick won the battle for better cover, Jay Z owns the debate on better production. Yes, Kendrick has a pair of Mike Will Made hits, and tracks from producers like 9th Wonder and The Alchemist. BUT! Nothing this year can equate to the level of sophistication and symmetry applied by NO.I.D. on 4:44. His production gives all the feels of soul music, an essence in hip hop that many argue has faded from the ethos.

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First Week Sales Though Sprint purchased 1m albums from TIDAL then offered them for free - this was never reported to Nielsen the data reporting agency, so it doesn’t count. But DAMN didn’t sell, or stream 1 million units its first week, by any scheme. However, the album did reach 2m units aka *Double Platinum* within 103 days. (FYI: More Life by Drake - 505k +in its first week).

4:44 : 262k + DAMN : 603k + Jay Z 3 Kendrick 3

Editor Picks: Moonlight - Jay Z / Duckworth - Kendrick Lamar

Final Score

It seems clear today that Kendrick has produced the hotter album. With 10 of the 14 (71%) of the album earning a spot on the Billboard 200, to date this is one of the best charting albums of all genres. Kendrick ingeniously has his cake and is eating it too, by serving up something for the lyrical analysts and the vibe gurus, at the same DAMN time. With that being said, I believe that in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 years 4:44 will have even 21 Savage fans saying damn! Not to mention he just released the highly anticipated 4:44 Bonus tracks (“Adnis”, a song/video on daddy issues, “Blue’s Freestyle/We Family”, self-explanatory **Jay goes off**, “MaNyFaCedGod”, feat. James Blake) and something about hearing Blue Ivy flowing “boom shaka laka” has me thinking she’s up next. These two albums are like walking in on your parents have sex. You’re going to close your eyes, but you can’t close your eyes and you won’t ever forget it.

issa tie.

-Sensei Joe

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