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Tuesday, February 19, 2008
CD review: Ghostland Observatory - ‘Robotique Majestique’
‘Robotique Majestique’
(Trashy Moped)
For its first album after becoming overnight sensations at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2006, the band has jettisoned the last remaining vestiges of that most indestructible of rock tropes, the electric guitar. This is electronic music made without computers; analog synths, banging drum machines and Aaron Behrens’ voice, getting stronger and more Freddie Mercury-esque by the minute.
But they’re still writing songs that work better while Behrens is hurling himself around the stage, laser lights flashing, braids jumping, Thomas Turner and his cape hitting buttons, flipping switches, setting sequencers to run out their patterns.
After a soundtrack-like, lead-off track, ‘Heavy Heart’ is the clear single, some of the most ‘digital’-sounding music Thomas has recorded, a snare thump steady under clipped, bouncing synth flickers and Behrens’ bazooka bray, so reminiscent in spots of the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala. (Note: This is not a knock.)
‘Dancing on My Grave’ demands just such an act, while on the blipping title track, straight out of 1982 in feel, Behrens, all id, confronts machine-life and demands it dance with him (which is sort of the story of this band). ‘The Band Marches On’ is track seven out of 10, but with its light pop melody and slamming beat, might be the album’s best structured track. ‘Holy Ghost White Noise’ is both an instrumental and the album’s funkiest moment. ‘HFM’ is almost late ’80s industrial, while the ‘Club Soda’ is proggy in its epic, instrumental feel.
Not too bad, but I can’t wait for the show.
- SoundCheck: Listen to Ghostland Observatory
- Photos: The rise of Ghostland Observatory
- The A-List: Ghostland Observatory at Emo’s, 06.20.07
- Ghostland: population 2
- Synth duos: Two against the world
(Pictured: Ghostland Observatory at ACL Fest 2007. Photo by Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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SXSW (officially) goes East
Our interview with SXSW director Roland Swenson continues:
American-Statesman: One of the things that makes SXSW work is that the clubs are all pretty much in walking distance to each other. But with the incredible crush downtown, why doesn’t the fest expand to East Austin, which hasn’t had an official venue since Victory Grill in the ’90s?
Swenson: We are using Red’s Scoot Inn for shows this year, as well as several events at the Carver Center. We have ongoing discussions with other Eastside clubs that aren’t working with us yet, for various reasons. In some cases there are noise or capacity issues. I believe that East Austin is the obvious place for the club district to expand, assuming the neighborhood wants it.
American Statesman: Why aren’t there official venues far south to, say, Hill’s Cafe? Also, the Hole In the Wall, once a favorite SXSW venue, hasn’t been used in recent years. Why is that?
Swenson: We’ve had to accept the fact that it’s a losing battle to get our industry audience to travel further than walking distance at night from downtown hotels. Often, we just couldn’t get enough registrants to go to the outlying clubs to satisfy the artists who travel here primarily for industry exposure.
Some big problems include parking and the shortage of cabs. Ten years ago, you could find a cab or hop in a rental car, drive to catch a set at the Hole in the Wall or Broken Spoke, make it back downtown and still get to another show within an hour. That’s very difficult to do now. We spent a lot of money over the years on shuttle vehicles, without much success. During SXSW, waiting 20 minutes for a shuttle feels like an eternity.
But the biggest obstacle to SXSW spreading out from downtown Austin is that it’s just too easy for people to stay downtown and walk from club to club. If, and when, light rail is expanded north and south, it should be easier to make SXSW work for more clubs.
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More confirmations for Chaos in Tejas
Hardcore punk promoter Timmy Hefner’s Chaos in Tejas festival has confirmed reunion sets from Los Crudos and Leatherface.
Los Crudos are considered by many to be one of, if not the, best hardcore band of the 1990s. There aren’t too many contemporary hardcore bands they didn’t influence.
Leatherface were British and bridged the gap between crust punk’s roar, straight ahead pop-punk and what eventually became nth-wave emo in really clever ways. Bands such as Hot Water Music clearly have a few Leatherface albums in their collections.
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End of No Depression
The influential No Depression magazine, started by former Austin American Statesman staffer Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden of Seattle, will fold after publishing its May-June issue. Named after Uncle Tupelo’s first album, No Depression was a great supporter of such Austin acts as Alejandro Escovedo (named “Artist of the Decade” in 1999), Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Patty Griffin, Kelly Willis and the like. The magazine always had its heart in the right place and treated its writers well. It will be greatly missed.
Here’s the statement:
Dear Friends:
Barring the intercession of unknown angels, you hold in your hands the next-to-the-last edition of No Depression we will publish. It is difficult even to type those words, so please know that we have not come lightly to this decision.
In the thirteen years since we began plotting and publishing No Depression, we have taken pride not only in the quality of the work we were able to offer our readers, but in the way we insisted upon doing business. We have never inflated our numbers; we have always paid our bills (and, especially, our freelancers) on time. And we have always tried our best to tell the truth.
First things, then: If you have a subscription to ND, please know that we will do our very best to take care of you. We will be negotiating with a handful of magazines who may be interested in fulfulling your subscription. That is the best we can do under the circumstances.Those circumstances are both complicated and painfully simple. The simple answer is that advertising revenue in this issue is 64% of what it was for our March- April issue just two years ago. We expect that number to continue to decline.
The longer answer involves not simply the well-documented and industrywide reduction in print advertising, but the precipitous fall of the music industry. As a niche publication, ND is well insulated from reductions in, say, GM’s print advertising budget; our size meant they weren’t going to buy space in our pages, regardless.
On the other hand, because we’re a niche title we are dependent upon advertisers who have a specific reason to reach our audience. That is: record labels. We, like many of our friends and competitors, are dependent upon advertising from the community we serve.
That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print.
The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we’ve been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.
Then there’s the economy…
The cumulative toll of those forces makes it increasingly difficult for all small magazines to survive. Whatever the potentials of the web, it cannot be good for our democracy to see independent voices further marginalized. But that’s what’s happening. The big money on the web is being made, not surprisingly, primarily by big businesses.
ND has never been a big business. It was started with a $2,000 loan from Peter’s savings account (the only monetary investment ever provided, or sought by, the magazine). We have five more or less full-time employees, including we three who own the magazine. We have always worked from spare bedrooms and drawn what seemed modest salaries.
What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we’d love to tell you about.
And we have taken great pride in being one of the last bastions of the long-form article, despite the received wisdom throughout publishing that shorter is better. We were particularly gratified to be nominated for our third Utne award last year.
Our cards are now on the table.
Though we will do this at greater length next issue, we should like particularly to thank the advertisers who have stuck with us these many years; the writers, illustrators, and photographers who have worked for far less than they’re worth; and our readers: You.
Thank you all. It has been our great joy to serve you.
GRANT ALDEN
PETER BLACKSTOCK
KYLA FAIRCHILD
