Hypnotizing...

I could watch this all day...

Raccoo-oo-oon Is Night People

Recently this blog has been rather dormant, and I don't think that is so good. The point of this blog and our society really has always been to discover new music. Part of discovering new music is sharing the music you've discovered so I've decided to share with you all a new album I have recently listened to non stop. It's called Is Night People, and its by, Raccoo-oo-oon, a band who hail from Iowa.Is Night People was originally released on cassette in 2005, but it was basically only available in Iowa, and less than a thousand copies were made. Since its initial release the album has been it has been remastered by Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans, and re-released on CD.

About a month ago I first heard of Raccoo-oo-oon from a friend of mine who had one of their other cassettes. They seemed rad so I looked them up on the internet. I found out that Is Night People was re-released and from then on I searched for the CD. It took two weeks before I found a copy on eBay. I quickly hit the buy it now option and four days later Is Night People was waiting at my house. As soon as I got it I put it in my stereo and let the waves of noise wash over me. It was better than I had anticipated. Since then Is Night People has basically been the only CD I've listened to (in fact the only other CD's I've listened too have been Pavement). Every track on Is Night People is vaguely similar. You can tell the same band recorded all the tracks yet each one has a different vive to it, but none the less the album flows perfectly. The key to Is Night People's awesomeness and its similarity is the layers of noise. It seems like each track has five guitars, two basses, drums, and some weird synth instruments. Most bands are completely unable of doing this at all, but Raccoo-oo-oon execute it nearly flawlessly. Most of the tracks have little vocals, but the tracks that do don't use the vocals/lyrics to drive the songs they just add to the blissful chaos. I don't know if it really is chaos because although hundreds of sounds bounce into my ears but they are all important and they are all purposeful.

When I first bought this album I thought it would be good, but I had no idea it was going to be one of my favorite albums of the year. You might call it Avant- Garde. You might call it Noise. You might call it experimental or even psychedelic, but it doesn't matter cause all I know is that it is awesome.

Boston keeps getting screwed!!

A few days ago (possibly yesterday) the great Robert Pollard cancelled two Massachusetts shows (one in Northampton and one in Boston) and today I found out a show I was going to was also cancelled (Matt and Kim on the 25th). Now its one thing for Pollard a 40+ yearold man to cancel due to a calf problem, Matt and Kim cancelled because the venue was taken or something and that is bull shit. There are thousands of places to play hell they could have even played in my garage, but no now they won't be playing at all damb them damb them good.

Wowee Zowee!!!!!!

As you may know I'm a bit of a Pavement fan and as you also may know Wowee Zowee Pavement's 3rd album which came out in 1995 was reissued along with countless bonus tracks last week. Last week on Monday I got my Wowee Zowee along with pre-order only merchandise including a poster, a never before released 7 inch, and a live CD.

Now for those of you who don't know Wowee Zowee was realest following the breakthrough (shut up all of you they had three songs on MTV and they were supposed to be the next Nirvana so shut up it was a breakthrough) of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. It was heavily anticipated by the critics and many said Pavement were going to be the next Nirvana. The critics thought they were going to get a grungy, guitar driven, piece of crap, but instead Pavement delivered a big f*ck you to the music industry. Wowee Zowee was more than an album it was a rejection of all that was corporate. WZ only had two songs anything like what the critics wanted Flux= Rad and Serpentine Pad and even those were border line. WZ was critically panned, but fans loved, many see it as Pavement's finest moment.

I could go on talking about WZ for over ten minutes (Nik has timed me) but instead I'm going to review the reissue as I originally intended. So the first 18 tracks on WZ are the original album and are needless to say awesome. WZ is quite varied which makes it great. After the original tracks come the Father to Sister of Thought B- sides, the Rattled by the Rush B- sides, and then the Pacific Trim EP. Easily fooled is truly a Pavement classic off the Rattled by the Rush B- side, but other than that nothing really stands out off the two B- sides, however the Pacific Trim EP is truly awesome, the only problem I already own it. Pacific Trim has great tracks such as Give it a Day, Gangstesr and Pranksters, and I Love Perth. The second disc in the two disc set is filled with radio spots and various compilation recordings (ie soundtrack to I Shot Andy Warhol). Most of this is new to my ears, but nothing is special, much of it is in fact just different versions other other Pavement tunes. The one gem on the second disc has to be a song called Candyland which was first (and as far as I know only) played live on an Australian radio show.

The WZ reissue is definitely the worst of the three reissues (Slanted was reissued in 02 and Crooked was reissued in 04) containing few great tracks that I didn't have, but it is still pretty good. I know I'm biased but throw out the second disc listen to the first disc from beginning to end and tell me Pavement doesn't rock the f*ck out of the world.



In Radiohead related news check out this video of the Arizona marching band covering some classic Radiohead tunes.