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- Queen "A Night At The Opera" 1975 (UK)
Queen
has been having a major resurgence in popularity in the last year, with
a movie and Oscar award for Rami Malek's portrayal of Freddie Mercury.
More review soon.
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- Eric Dolphy "Out To Lunch!" 1964 (USA)
Since
Kosmik Radiation returned to the 2am-5am timeslot earlier this year,
I've been pleased to bring back "non-rock music in the final hour of
the show" as a regular segment. What could be more surreal than waking
up very early (or going to bed very late) to the sounds of some of the
most out-there Modern Jazz ever recorded? Eric Dolphy was a shooting
star in the early 1960's jazz scene, seen as a peer of the likes of John Coltrane (whom he made a few classic records with) and Ornette Coleman,
at the forefront of the "New Thing" in jazz which was the grooviest
scene going before the 1960's turned on, tuned in, and dropped
out. But alas, Dolphy died under controversial circumstances at the
young age of 36 while on tour in Europe (the official version is he was
an undiagnosed diabetic who went hypoglycemic; the more controversial
one is that European doctors did not give him proper care because they
assumed an American jazz musician feeling sick must be a junky, which
Eric was not). His final studio album Out To Lunch!
was his masterpiece as well as his swan song, and for 50 years now has
been considered one of the cornerstone albums of that "sixties New
Thing Modern Jazz" style. So what do we get here? Five original Eric
Dolphy compositions (RIYL the idiosyncratic atonal wackiness of
Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman) performed by a legendary band:
Dolphy on saxes and flute, Bobby Hutcherson the undisputed ModJazz
master of the vibraphone, Freddie Hubbard the second-most popular
trumpeter of the 60's and 70's, Richard Davis (later a beloved
UW-Madison music professor) on the bass, and playing drums is 17
year-old Tony Williams who had just joined Miles Davis' legendary quintet.
But Dolphy is unquestionably the star here: his playing is every bit as
"free" as the notorious Ornette (according to legend Dolphy used to
practice sax by playing along with birds chirping outside his
window), but with the top-flight chops of a Charlie Parker. It's truly
intriguing to consider where Dolphy might have gone had he lived long
enough to see the hippie era and electrified jazz fusion that followed:
what could he have done with a wah-wah pedal and an amplifier?!?!
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- FEMM (Far East Mention Mannequins) "FEMM-isation" 2014 (Japan)
This
week, our "weird girls from the Internet" classic album series
continues with another Japanese electro-pop jam from the 2010's
decade which was originally only released as a digital download
(futuristic!)
FEMM is a high-concept, post-ironic "group" which apparently has
just two members, the rapping, dancing "living mannequin" duo comprised
of "RiRi MS-000000" and
"LuLa SW-000000". Since mannequins can not talk (though apparently they
can sing and rap!), each member also has an "agent"
who
acts as their spokesperson: "Honey-B" and "W-Trouble" (who also made a
guest appearance rapping on one of the first FEMM singles). Needless to
say, these are all stage names for the girls who portray the
characters: real names, Emily Kaiho (former D-list Hollywood actress)
and Hiro Todo (former failed solo singer). FEMM is really a
project involving a large team of unseen songwriters and producers from
Japan, Europe and the USA: more than 30 people got songwriting credit
on this album, and none of them are named Kaiho or Todo (do the girls
in the videos even sing on the record?!) They are
notable for being the first J-Pop group to record an album entirely in
English, which may explain why it remains an underground thing:
they sound
too American for Japan, and too Japanese for America? And taking
this international
chameleon thing even further, both of the girls in FEMM are "halfs"
(the Japanese term for half-Japanese): Emily is half-Scottish-American
(born in Hawaii) and Hiro
is half-Filipina. So when you see them in a video (often wearing
colorful wigs), it's difficult to tell
what country or continent they come from! Artistically speaking, their
debut and so far only full-length album is an electronic
dance pop record with rap lyrics on the theme of "girl power", which
means "get out of our way for we are powerful girls!" rather than some
kind of hippie "equality/feminism" deal. But then, they are robots
made of plastic, so they were built perfect! FEMM is also an
extremely
"corporate" undertaking, as measured by the fact that many of their
live appearances seem to be at music and technology conferences rather
than club dates (they also
did an "in residence, art installation" series of performances in Tokyo
last year - no doubt with sponsors), plus the vast quantity of
corporate logos that proceed all of their music
videos. I think there might be a video for every song on this
album; here's the four songs I played on the show this week:
"Astroboy", "Kill The DJ", "The Real Thing", and "POW!"
(a follow-up
single from 2016). However, their most popular song (the only one to
reach 1 million views on Youtube, which is actually not that
impressive) is "Fxxk
Boyz Get Money"
- for those times when you're feeling misandristic
and capitalistic but also want to curse a lot while twerking in a vinyl maid uniform!
FEMM's combination of cutting-edge electronic music, ironic "robot shtick" and girly
pop lyrics seems like it may be yet another influence on America's most
J-pop-influenced singer Poppy (who is also robotic, ironic, girly, and
makes fine electropop music - Poppy even raps like a Japanese girl on her latest release.) |
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- That Poppy "Bubblebath" EP 2016 (USA)
Perhaps
the weirdest millenial girl pop singer of them all, in a few short
years Poppy (originally known as "That Poppy") has grown from an
obscure wannabe pop star on Youtube to the most notorious pop star
parody in the history of the Interweb. Though in terms of actual
popularity (obviously a key metric in "pop(ular)" music), her songs
remain obscure to the general public - she's more like "indie rock
famous" than actually "famous". But this is not indie rock, it is definitely POP
music - which is supposed to be ephemeral, "not art", trendy, shallow,
disposable noise for the undiscriminating lowest common denominator
(teenagers!) But like Andy Warhol's soup cans and brillo pads,
sometimes disposable junk can become art. "Poppy" is often described as
a project, rather than a person: Moriah Pereira (age 21 when Bubblebath
was released) is the singer/actress who portrays the character
Poppy, while "Titanic Sinclair" (real name Corey Mixter) is usually
credited as co-creator (he tours with her and co-writes some
songs, but his main contribution is directing those infamous
Poppy videos). Poppy is a blend of so many odd themes and trends
- click the album cover to the left for an explainer video - but some
of them include: 1) viral meme generator (and spoofer), 2) social
commentator by way of parody, 3) legit pop singer/songwriter (this EP
was released on the major label Island Records), 4) Satanic cult victim
(or cult leader?), 5) tool (or critic?) of capitalism, 6) J-Pop-style
character (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's American ripoff--err, "cousin"), 7) CIA
brainwashing experiment?, 8) sortof-transgender gay rights champion?,
9) secret totem of the "alt-right"?, 10) practioner of ASMR (her
ultra-soft, feminine, breathy voice), 11) a poor kid who left her
broken home in Tennessee at age 15 and ran off to Hollywood as soon as she was out
of high school, 12) a robot, or Artifical Intellgence, or magically
animated mannequin?, 13) just plain creepy! The Illuminati and Project Monarch also figure in there too. All very interesting - but what
about Poppy music? So far her three major releases (this EP followed by
two albums in 2017 and 2018) have all featured well-written, extremely
catchy songs with lyrics that have progressed from the haunting
semi-autobiographical debut (this week's CAOTW), to zeitgeisty
Internet culture parody on POPPY.COMPUTER
(one of the funniest comedy-music albums released in decades),
to building up her metanarrative in interesting ways on the most
recent Am I A Girl?
album (which also added a dose of heavy metal to her previous dancepop
and techno stylings). One of the intriguing contradictions
of Poppy is that the character dresses like a Barbie doll (J-Pop
edition) and speaks in a spacy, robotic monotone, but as a
singer her voice conveys plenty of power and human emotion. Unlike the aforementioned Ms. Pamyu Pamyu (who doesn't play any
musical instruments, write any of her music or lyrics, and probably needs AutoTune to sing), Ms. Pereira
has been a co-writer of every Poppy song released so far and on her 2019 tour she's even playing guitar with her band - so she is an actual
musician and not "just an actress." There's been a
tremendous amount of breadth and growth across her three releases so
far, and each record has managed to blow away whatever expectations her
audience might have had from the previous one - besides layering
mysteries on rumours upon enigmas (though perhaps it's all parody and
bullshit), she also maintains interest through the sheer "what will she
do next?!" factor. |
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- Kyary Pamyu Pamyu "Nanda Collection" 2013 (Japan)
This
week's classic album is the greatest and most gonzo pop album of the
21st century, if not in the entire history of the human
race! How's
that for a pretentious opening sentence? "Kyary Pamyu Pamyu", the
alter ego invented by Kiriko Takemura (who will celebrate her 26th
birthday this week), is a J-Pop superstar who takes the very concept of
"pop star" to new heights of post-irony. For KPP is
not just a pop star, she's a real live magical girl who inhabits her own world! In the "PamyuPamyuLand" depicted in her videos she cavorts with monsters and ghosts,
while hers is the only normal human face you'll ever see. Well, her face isn't normal - she's
incredibly cute (a fashion model since high school), but is
also known for clowny face-pulling, fake moustaches,
and incongruous gross-out touches in her music videos (weapons and
disembodied body parts, putting her finger up her nose, poop and puke
jokes)
Also check out the "monster mouth" makeup she is wearing on the
cover
of
the album to the left - she's basically like a cartoon character come to
life. She called her early style "traumatic cuteness",
which is a brilliant idea, but we're just getting started; next there's
the "race question." Her school friends called her "Carrie" because her
blonde wigs and spacey demeanor made her seem like a Western tourist;
she changed the spelling and added "Pamyu Pamyu" which is nonsense
apparently meant to sound like a Westerner's idea of Japanese. And when
she's not making fun of white folks, she also engages in extremely
kitschy "orientalism" - singing her hit song about ninjas while doing a
dance made up of karate poses. Her videos
and concerts are a sensory overload
of campy girliness resulting in something very close to
psychedelia (flashing lights and dancing teddy bears, just like a Dead
concert!) Her incredibly catchy songs and wacky "Japenglish" lyrics
wouldn't make
sense if anyone else sang them, yet she has no part in writing the
words or music (that's Yasutaka Nakata's
job) and as far as I can tell most of her live performances are
lip-synched. I
don't think her fans could care less - another level is that though she
portrays a magically talented superbeing in her songs and videos (On
Stage KPP), she's also a beloved Japanese celebrity (Off Stage KPP) who does talk
shows and interviews where she refers to her On Stage persona in the
third person. Everybody knows what she does is "fake", most especially
herself, but everyone also gets it that the best entertainment usually
is "fake." Then there is at least one
more verion of KPP: "in real life" the mastermind Kiriko is
apparently a bespectacled nerd
who favors baggy monochrome t-shirts, giving her the aura of being
extremely normal and approachable in spite of also being a magical
beloved celebrity fashion icon. (Kyary is also a skilled
unicyclist who did a concert tour
with acrobats and magicians - if she hadn't met Nakata, she probably
would have made an excellent circus clown!) Finally, there is a message
behind all this wackiness, or really two messages: 1) the ecstatic joy
of KAWAII (Kyary loves you and wants you to be happy), and 2)
encouraging non-conformity
(Kyary knows she is different from other
people and doesn't care what they think - don't you feel the same?
That's actually a somewhat subversive thought in notoriously conformist
Japan.) Nanda Collection
was her second album and shot to #1 on the Japanese pop charts, proving
that her appeal was based on more than just a brief fashion trend (i.e., the "Harajuku Girl" fad of which she was the most famous proponent). This
album features two of her three most iconic hit singles, "Ninja Ri
Bang Bang" and "Fashion Monster"; her other signature song "Pon Pon Pon" was released as a single in 2011 when she was just 18 years old. |
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- Haru Nemuri "Haru To Shura" 2018 (Japan)
I've
had an exciting year of discovering new music in 2018, and most of it
was made by ladies and/or Japanese folks. Combining the best of these
two trends, young Haruna Kimishima goes by the stage name Haru
Nemuri ("Springtime Sleeping") and comes across on her debut album with a rap version of Patti Smith's intense and emotive poetry plus a hint of Yoko Ono's
unrestrained shriek, though she's hardly a copy of either. (And I'm
sure the Yoko comparisons have only just begun: it seems like every new concert clip
that comes online features more screamo vocals than the last one.) In
addition to a voice that sounds compelling in any language, Haru's
other secret weapon is that she writes music that sounds a bit weird
and disonant at first, but on repeated listenings her songs are
simple-yet-dramatic and quite catchy - though also kind of hard to
describe. Her style seems to be positioned somewhere between punk rock,
art rock, rap, and poetry, yet it is also somehow "pop" at the same
time. With only two EPs and a single released in the 18 months prior to
her full-length debut album Haru To Shura
("Springtime And Carnage"), Haru is by far the youngest artist to
receive the Kosmik Radiation #1 album of the year award, as well as the
only artist to have their debut album claim the top spot. She's also
among the most obscure: her album is only available in digital format
outside of Japan, and none of her music videos have even reached
100,000 views on Youtube yet (though I did read that her album was
streamed a million times on Spotify - which could indicate she's more
popular in the West than in Japan?!)
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- Jean-Luc Ponty "King Kong: John-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa" 1970 (France)
For
this year's Zappa-themed show, perhaps the most interesting non-Zappa
album that is totally Zappa-related. Not only are all but one of the
tunes Zappa compositions, recent Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood (arranger, conductor, reeds) and Art Tripp (percussion) play on it, as does future Mother George Duke and some of the same studio pros that played on Hot Rats and The Grand Wazoo. Plus of course, Ponty himself played his electric violin on Hot Rats
and toured as a member of the Mothers around the time this album was
being recorded. Also, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's slightly Christmas-like
song "Mottai-Nightland", wishing you a baffling pink icecream poo holiday (see about 2:00 into the video)!
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