Wednesday, April 23, 2003 4:07 PM - bo||e


Former associate of the Riot Grrl movement in the early 90's, Kathleen Hanna (formally of Bikini Kill and The Fakes) joined up with Johanna Fateman (well known international video maker) and Sadie Benning (writer behind the zines 'Artaud-Mania!' and 'My Need To Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock') to form Le Tigre. They released their first LP self titled in 1999 which quickly formed a cult following in the underground scene later that year. Soon after the success of the first album, Sadie Benning left to concentrate on her arts career and J.D. Samson was brought in as a replacement.

A couple of years later they released their 2nd LP, then a 12" remix long player of their vision for a hardcore dance genre infused with radical politics, which Triple J has got a hold of over the past couple of weeks. The trio has influenced and been influenced by a lot of great band such as Sleater-Kinney, Quix*o*tic, The Yeah Yeah Yeah€™s, Chicks On Speed and others

Le Tigre - Deceptacon (dfa remix) 192 kbps 8.7mb
Le Tigre - My My Metrocard 128kbps 2.7mb
Le Tigre - WhatsYour Take On Cassavetes 128kbps 2.1mb

Once again, if you€™re not happy with 128kb rips direct your anger and/or arse at silpheed

Just a random track that€™s cool from New Zealand outfit Goodshirt

Goodshirt - Green 128 kbps 1.9mb

Friday, April 18, 2003 3:54 PM - ExistAngst

How many saviors do you think rock music needs before we can consider it safe? It all started rather amiably in 2001 when The Strokes released their debut album: Is this it?. That album was soon hailed as the savior of rock & roll: a christ-like figure that would save us all from the inhumanity of Britney Spears and deliver us from the evil of The Backstreet Boys. Of course it didn't end there. Soon after that The White Stripes released their instant classic, White Blood Cells. But even this was only really a modest trickle of savior-rock compared to what was still to come.
Now the madness truly began. Every man, woman and dog with their nose in the lattest NME or Rolling Stone read about how this band or that band or this other band would be the savior of rock and roll. Returning to us, according to the savior-rock myth, the raw immediate power of rock music that we had forgotten about for much too long. The Hives, The Vines, The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and others all clambered onto the "Savior Rock" bandwagon. Even here in Australia, we got into the spirit of the moment, lauding the rock greatness of Jet, The Cassanovas, Rocket Science, The Datsuns etc etc.

Ho Fucking Hum.

How many saviors do we need? Do we need a whole committee of them? Organising the rescue of rock music? A crowd of mini christs, dying for rock music? Rock musicians.... no wait scratch that.... the people that control the flow of music hype (quasi-journalists) need to disavow themselves of this prometheus-complex they have going on.

But it seems the lesson has not yet been learnt.

The Raveonettes are a girl/boy garage rock duo from Denmark. Woah. Big hype points already. They're from scandinavia and have an ambiguously defined relationship. I can almost hear the NME sycophants and hype-merchants percolating from here.

"Huarrah!! A European White Stripes for us to worship! I bags being the first to put his raveonette penis in my mouth!" The NME Editor.

It's so blatant that Sony is aiming for favourable comparisons with the White Stripes, that they have even copied their colors: all Raveonettes PR and artwork comes out in a red, black and white color scheme.

Furthermore, they also have this sharia-law of rock music thing happening (also just like the Stripes did 2 years ago). You know. Rock minimalism at all costs. Must protect the purity of the art-form. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Each song written with only 3 chords. Each song written in the same key. Amped up fuzz. Self-imposed restrictions on tampering with the songs in the studio. You know how it is: where the label wants you to believe everything was recorded in single takes in someones garage, when the reality is that everything was pieced together with pro-tools and hundreds of studio takes, just to get it so perfectly imperfect.

How very rock & roll. *yawn*

The Raveonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders 192kbps, 3.5mb
The Raveonettes - Cops On Our Tail 192kbps, 4.14mb

Still. It remains to be seen whether or not the Raveonettes have the talent to live up to even a little bit of their hype. Perhaps more dangerous for the Raveonettes, it remains to be seen whether or not the "savior rock" hype machine has run its course yet. Certainly they'd have done alot better releasing this EP a year and a half ago.

None of this is to say that the Raveonettes ep isnt kinda good. I just rail against being told what i will and wont listen to in 2003. I can listen to commercial radio if i want to get that.

Happy Good Friday. How cool is it that i just happened to choose today of all days, to write a post with heavy biblical overtones in it?

Take this day, go see an R-rated movie, get disrespectfully drunk with your mates and have a fat beef steak for dinner.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003 2:48 AM - ExistAngst

Butterfinger - Everytime 128kbps, 3.93mb

Hilarious aussie hip-hop. I know nothing about Butterfingers, so i can tell you nothing. Which suits me fine right at the moment, because i don't much feel like writing big posts while uni is so hectic.

Monday, April 14, 2003 5:34 PM - MzMzMz

Uni's out this week and I'm bored, so I thought I'd write a post! Lucky enough a chick friend of mine sent me a pretty sick song today by a band called Underoath. Underoath are a 6 piece Emocore (Emo/Hardcore) band based in Florida, that seems to be making headway around the underground circuit in the US, or so i'm told. The song I've posted is off their last release, The Changing Of The Times LP, which was released back in Feb 2002. "When The Sun Sleeps" is sure to grip you, take you in and probably make you wanna take an axe to your mum when she asks you too take out the rubbish.

I'm still bored so I thought I'd go back into the JJJ Unearthed archives and listen to some of the bands that were quickly forgotten. Not suprisingly I found two fuckin sick tracks, the first by a band called Cause And Effect. Cause And Effect were unearthed in Hamilton with their track "Focal Luck", which sounds like early Silverchair if anything. It's sick!

The second band was Madderspiral who were unearthed in Geraldton with their winning track "Long Walk". Long Walk is a soft tranquel track, with a nice hard soothing chorus, which is unlike any band I can think of at the moment. Maybe a mix between The Sick Puppies and The Deftones, either way its a sick track!

PS - I apologise for JJJ's shit naming of the Mp3's!

Underoath - When The Sun Sleeps 128Kbps, 4.9Mb
Madderspiral - Long Walk 128Kbps, 3.5Mb
Cause And Effect - Focal Luck 128Kbps, 2.4Mb

Friday, April 11, 2003 6:56 PM - Alarmed

The Dandy Warhols were flavour of the month back in the 2001, with their album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, and perennial favourite 'Bohemian Like You' (which has featured in about a thousand TV shows, commercials, and movies since). Anyway Courtney Taylor-Taylor and the kids have a new album out, and it's called Welcome To The Monkey House. Some of it rules, some of it is a bit mediocre. There are fewer awesome guitar pop songs, and a lot more high pitched singing. Nevertheless, there are good times to be had.



They'll probably be touring here sometime later this year. Apparently their performance last time was quite awesome, so if they do tour be sure not to miss them.

The Dandy Warhols - We Used To Be Friends 192Kbps, 4.57Mb
The Dandy Warhols - Hit Rock Bottom 192Kbps, 3.97Mb

'We Used To Be Friends' is the first single from the forthcoming album. The other song is wickedly groovy. Also checkout the songs 'Plan A' and 'Heavenly'.

Shoutouts to Natus for the album, and brad for the webspace. Cheers lads.

7:41 AM - Craggles

I first heard AFI a few weeks back when I was flipping channels and came across their video for 'Girl's Not Grey'. I dug the song so I jumped on the net for some more info. The band hails from California and have been around for at least 8 years. They've released five albums with Sing the Sorrow being their latest effort coming out last month. All their previously releases had been through the predominatly punk label "Nitro Records", who gave The Offspring their start. If fact the band sounds a little like early Offspring with a dash of Bad Religion. Although they're kinda hard to pigeonhole, there is definatly some goth and industrial in their music and even a bit of 80's metal.

I have no idea whether they are getting airplay over here (in Australia) because I haven't really been listening to the j's much lately. 'Girl's Not Grey' is the first single and 'Miseria Cantare- The Beginning; is the records opening track.

AFI - Girl's Not Grey 192Kbps, 4.36Mb
AFI - Miseria Cantare- The Beginning 192Kbps, 4.05Mb

Monday, April 07, 2003 12:32 PM - MzMzMz

The Deftones upcoming album, rumoured to be self titled, is to be released on the 20th of May. The first single off the album is said to be called The Late Great Planet Earth, with video production to start this week. Well, I couldn't find the single on the net but I did find a demo recording, from their time in the studio recording the album. This track has the best fuckin intro and verse of any song I am into lately, the chorus lacks a bit though. This was no doubt my score of the week, it fuckin rocks.

PS. Deftones loved us aussies so much, when they came out here for the big day out, that their returning at the end of the year!

Deftones - Minerva 160Kbps, 2.8Mb

Wednesday, April 02, 2003 10:49 AM - Jaymis

Umm... Is this thing on?

Well, apparently Paradroid is happy to hold out on you people, but I'm not going to just sit on my hands here, when you could be feeling as great as I am. This greatness of feel, it stems from a simple string of alphanumerics and punctuation, it looks a little like this:

http://www.idioteque.it/multimedia/audio.htm

Editor: I'm sorry. Jay is lousy at explaining this stuff. This is not a direct mp3 link. You have to go to that site and download the files of type .rad. Then rename then to .mp3 files before you play them in winamp.

Jaymis: I'm sorry. I thought this site's target audience was a discerning group of online music sourcers-and-listeners, who like, know what they're at. I'll make my posts more 10 step program from now on.

I had a bit of an online listening party yesterday morning with my friend Rainer, which is what happened when we found Kid A a couple of months before release. This time was different though - much more swearing. I think the consensus was that we lacked the adjectives to describe how happy we were.

Some technical stuff: Yes, it seems that this is an unmastered copy of the album, as was mentioned by the 'droid down there:

But for anyone who reads these comments, I've downloaded the leaked copy, but current speculation is that the leak is an unmastered copy, lacking cross-fades between each track and some songs are shorter/longer than the final copy

Another friend who's an audio engineer confirmed that it sounds unmastered after his first listen. If you're thinking "Oh, well then I'm not going to bother until the real version comes out," you should think again. Apparently the mastering process takes a lot of the dynamics and colour out of the album in the interest of it sounding "loud" on radios and people's shithouse stereos. There is a belief in audio engineering circles that people should be able to buy "unmastered" copies of albums, because that's how the band/producer intended it to be heard, un-nerfed for radio.

Getting away from the sound quality debate and towards the actual content of this album, well, wow.

I believe this is the album I've been waiting for since Ok Computer. Don't get me wrong, I liked Kid A and Amnesiac, but they didn't live in my stereo like Ok Computer did. They had some amazing tracks, and I still listen to them, but the albums as a whole just didn't do it for me. Of course you can think what you like, that's just my opinion, so don't burn your copies of these discs (I know I haven't).

Hail to the Thief is something else though. I think they've gotten over their "we need to do new, interesting, crazy stuff to freak people out and make them think we're not sellouts" stage. They've done that, proven that they're musical innovators, and now they can get back into being one of the greatest bands in the world, and have written one of the albums of the year. Thief encompasses everything that's good about Radiohead from the last 10ish years. We've got some great guitar stuff rockin us out ("2+2=5" and "Go To Sleep" are pure pure The Bends), we've got plenty of Ok Computer-esq lyrical singing and playing, plenty of Thom on piano ("Sit Down Stand Up"), some really great beats ("Backdrifts" and "the Gloaming" = wikkid IDM action) and synth work, and plenty more of the layered soundscape action we've come to love over the past two albums ("Where I End"..., "Suck Young Blood"). Other notables are the return of el Japanese Fuzz pedal ("Myxamatosis") which made the last movement of "Exit Music" so memorable, the rather Funky "Punch Up at a Wedding", and of course the single "There There" which has got a very Ok Computer feel indeed.

All in all this is an incredible album. A couple of the tracks are merely great (after the first 5 or so listens), the rest are amazing. Hail to the Thief is everything I wanted.