ORIGINAL HIPSTER

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m reporting the results of a music preference quiz I took on signalpatterns.com. It’s pretty nifty. You listen to music clips and rate them, and then the site gives you a profile of what your tastes tend to be. Even if you consider yourself relatively self-aware, it’s interesting to see how what you think you like compares with your score on the quiz. A fun time-waster, if nothing else.

According to the quiz, my music preferences are “tempo, loud, and aggressive,” with the characteristics “instrumental” and “complex” ranking not far behind the first three.

I guess I’m using this post as a disclaimer. Basically, if I don’t like your music, most likely that’s because it’s too slow, quiet, passive, non-instrumental (whatever that means), and simple for my tastes. I suppose if you were quietly singing a slow song a cappella, I’d get bored. That doesn’t mean your music sucks. It means I’m probably innately biased against it. Consider yourself warned.

On Saturday night, I attended Sxip Shirey‘s CD release party at City Winery. Thank God I took a pen and a piece of paper with me because the night turned out to be one of those rare musical experiences that I can’t not write about. By the end, I’d filled with notes every scrap of space on that paper, the back of my bar tab receipt, and much of my left forearm. And I still feel like whatever I write about this performance is not going to do it justice. But here goes.

Sonic New York is a solid experimental album, but to discover the real joy in the songs, you must experience them live. Seeing how the bizarre sounds on the album are made, hearing Sxip explain the process before playing each piece, and then witnessing sounds that seem, on the album, unrepeatable actually being replicated onstage is nothing short of astonishing. It’s like watching a magician explain how he’s going to perform his next trick, seeing the trick, and still not being able to fully comprehend how it’s humanly possible. A marble in a glass bowl and several puffs of air into the mike become church bells. A few duct-taped penny whistles become a pipe organ. Add some bicycle-bell-like jingles, and, incredibly, we’re listening to a recollection of the Munich Glockenspiel. Truly marvelous.

Many of these effects are inventively achieved with a Moog pedal. For example, Sxip runs a harmonica through the Moog. He plays a harmonica riff, loops it like a backbeat, then plays a melody over it. Suddenly we’re in what sounds like a circus tent rave DJ’ed by an elephant on a calliope. It’s whimsical; it’s beautiful; it’s danceable. Sxip the ringmaster conducts–with the hand not holding the harmonica–in gestures suited alternately to a hip-hop artist and a symphony maestro. It would not be an overstatement to say that, with his multi-layered combinations of carefully timed playback and concurrent melodies, Sxip is kind of the Brian May of instrumental toys.

Not all the songs rely on this playback method, however. When Sxip is joined onstage by world-class beat-boxer Adam Matta, singer Rhiannon Giddens (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops), and tuba player Don Godwin, the melding of talent is organically seamless, and Sxip’s collaborative strengths are easily apparent.

During the set, Sxip points out that toys that appear to be identical can have different pitches. Evidently, he’s able to memorize the pitches produced by these toys (plastic bells, for instance) that are differentiated only by color or their position in a group of replicas held together by duct tape. He hears potential chords among the toys and with them creates an accompaniment; then he whistles a melody in the same key. Having a good ear for music is one thing, but having the ability to hear music in a collection of gadgets–and to remember which gadget makes which noise at which pitch the next time you pick it up–goes beyond having a good ear; it reveals an ingenious creativity and a keen knack for identifying and recalling patterns. Playing the songs is as visual as it is auditory, which is why seeing Sxip perform in person adds an entirely new dimension to the music.

The energy from the audience was almost tangible, and by the end of the show, everyone was on their feet, dancing. Strangely, though, before the concert, the atmosphere felt like a reception. I got the feeling that many people either knew or recognized each other. (AFP and Neil Gaiman were among the guests, and I sat across from Rima Fand of the Luminescent Orchestrii.) When he took the stage, Sxip remarked about the familiar faces in the audience, “I feel like I’m either at someone’s wedding or someone’s funeral.” There was an air of both celebration and loss about the evening; if it wasn’t a funeral, it was at least a sort of climactic closure to Sxip’s time in New York. He seems dead-set on moving to Berlin within the next couple of months, though Saturday night he said, “When you try to leave New York, it doesn’t want you to go.”

Since I work with/for/in Love Crushed Velvet, I’m biased about the band. That’s why I’m asking YOU to tell me what you think of this new music video. Be honest. Be critical. Be euphoric with praise. Whatever you want. What do you think?

…If you like this song, you can download it for free at LoveCrushedVelvet.com. And if you REALLY want to help us out, repost this music video and share it with your friends! Thanks!

Anyone following me on Twitter or Facebook may have noticed that lately I’ve been commenting to excess on Lady GaGa. This is not because I’m a super fan (or really a full-fledged fan, per se). Rather, inspired by a Houston Press blog post by Craig Hlavaty, I’ve been sort of studying GaGa–what she says about herself, how the media have latched onto her like an alien curiosity, how her little monster minions rapturously attend her shows and public appearances. I’ve inundated my waking life with GaGa info–archival YouTube footage, early performances, interviews, and music videos, this month’s Rolling Stone feature, Barbara Walters’ pre-Oscar interview, the recent interview on Larry King Live. I’ve even toyed with a couple of her songs on the piano (like Method acting: Method researching). It was while watching GaGa’s exchange with Larry King just now that I finally realized why I’ve become so fascinated by this whole GaGa trend: we’re witnessing a major cultural moment. If it’s not as significant as Beatlemania, it’s probably as significant as grunge.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that Lady GaGa has spawned the most socially important development in music since Nirvana.

When I say “socially important,” I don’t mean that there’s necessarily something profound–emotionally, spiritually, politically, aesthetically, or intellectually–about the music or about the performer (although her lyrics are often so open-ended and her showmanship so bizarre that you could easily project onto it any level of depth that you wanted. In this sense, GaGa is the consummate narcissistic mirror for anyone who would identify with her). What I mean is that a sociological serendipity has occurred, and no matter where you look, you can’t avoid catching a glimpse of it. Trust me–I’ve tried.

GaGa is the least likely person since Kurt Cobain to have become an overnight international superstar. Just as a heroin-addicted, manic-depressive slacker from Aberdeen was an unlikely GenX revolutionary, so in an inverse correlation is an upper-middle-class, Upper East Side Catholic School girl usually not apt to become the idol of social outcasts–particularly not through disco/pop music that caters to mainstream audiences. Since when do “freaks” and misfits proclaim loyalty to candy-coated, digitally engineered pop? It’s as though the next generation of would-be Marilyn Manson fans have turned instead to a sensational young woman.

A primarily self-made star of GaGa’s origins is a first-time anomaly in this country. We’ve grown accustomed to rags-to-riches stories of hardship, divorce, abuse–take your pick–to the extent that, when someone from a relatively stable upbringing emerges, we doubt her authenticity. GaGa grew up comfortably, if not privileged. She attended the same school as Paris Hilton. She began waiting tables at 15 in order to supplement her relatively conservative allowance of $20 a week. She dropped out of Tisch at NYU to live in an allegedly roach-ridden apartment where she snorted coke, dated a metal drummer, and wrote music; at night she set hairspray ablaze as a stripper. Whether she sought out this lifestyle as a rebellion against her family’s economic background, as an idealized starving artist scenario, out of necessity, or out of self-expression, we can only speculate. She eventually worked her way up through East Village/Lower East Side music venues before blasting into supernova success within about three years. Had the self-professed freak always existed beneath the veneer of a completely normal-looking, reportedly studious girl, or did the girl cultivate her inner freak in downtown Manhattan nightclubs until the alter-personality took on a life of its own, and the normal girl found her true self in a long-lost, far more interesting Doppelgänger?

Have you noticed how she kind of crumples her left hand periodically during interviews, as though it’s seizing up on itself? Perhaps that’s her inner monster clawing to get out. Or perhaps it’s a bit of performance that’s meant to perpetuate the monster theme. Is it intentional? With GaGa, I find myself constantly asking that question. Really, how smart is she? Is she truly so self-aware, calculating, and brazen as to have manufactured a mini-Madonna with no shame of some of the borderline plagiarisms* that she commits? If the answer is yes, then she deserves credit for being precociously strategic at 24 years old. If the answer is no–if she is unaware of those elements of her work that seem copied, contrived–then she must be the most oblivious, self-absorbed 24-year-old in the music industry.x

Or maybe she’s a bit of both.

The fact that I’m even devoting thoughts and words to these questions means that GaGa has effectively hooked me and held my attention. If she’s selling a line of bullshit via her increasingly intellectual explanations of her work–in other words, if this is pseudo-intellectualism in eye-gauging high heels–she’s selling it very convincingly. But what if she really is as smart as she’s starting to seem? What if she really is as enigmatic as her incomprehensible outfits? She’d be like the second coming of Warhol. A genuine pop artist, if there ever was such a thing.

I believe that, 20 years from now, we will look back on 2009-2010–the GaGa Moment, if you will–in the same way that we remember the pivotal influence of 1991′s “Smells Like Teen Spirit“. That the current phenomenon came from well-to-do beginnings makes GaGa’s artistic success harder to swallow; how much slyer the music seems for going down like a spoonful of sugar.

*Watch Madonna’s music videos for “Vogue“ and “Justify My Love” videos and then watch Lady GaGa’s “Alejandro“. Visually there are so many similarities that I lost count. Also note the Catholic imagery in “Alejandro” and then recall that Madonna first raised eyebrows by turning religious ideas into double entendres with “Like a Virgin” and “Like a Prayer”.

The last time I interviewed Sxip Shirey, the conversation lasted over an hour. The man would make an excellent auctioneer: he talks fast and thinks faster. I’d ask a question, and Sxip would give a fantastic answer—for the next 15 minutes. All of what he said was quotable, and extracting bits and pieces to conform to a word count was kind of painful because so much great stuff got left out.

This time around, I’m writing for my own blog, so I don’t have a maximum word count—but I also don’t have fingers nimble enough to type in time to Sxip’s rapid-fire patter. (And my phone recording capabilities have become unfortunately obsolete.) I solved these complications by engaging Sxip in a brief Twitter interview that, even in its brevity, identifies a significant shortcoming in this country’s funding for the arts.

But first—some words about Sxip’s new album, Sonic New York. The seventeen-track duration of the album furthers my impression that Sxip is as prolific musically as he is verbally. His style is experimental, if not unclassifiable—created with such diverse apparatus as “glass bowl and red marble” (according to the liner notes), “triple extended penny whistle,” “mutant harmonica,” and “toys,” among other more recognizable instruments.

The record is not, however, a formless collection of strange noises. If this is a concept album, the concept is clearly New York City—as perceived through Shirey’s eyes and ears. Many of the songs are titled after NYC locales—e.g., “Grammarcy Park,” “Through China Town,” “Brooklyn Bridge Song.” Lyrically, Shirey recounts specific memories of these places. (“I remember Thompkins Square Park,” he sings a capella. “There were 15 punk rockers pounding a piano into junk. It wasn’t sad. It was beautiful.”) Sonically, Sxip translates what he’s heard at these landmarks through his bizarre collection of instruments into tunes that are as wonderfully wacky as they are surprisingly musical.

Anyone who has seen Sxip perform with the Luminescent Orchestrii knows that he’s a fierce guitarist; he’s also a respectable songwriter with a collaborative spirit, as evidenced by other artists’ contributions to the album. Aimee Curl (of Furnace Mountain) adds smoky vocals to a number of tracks, including “Asleep on the Subway” and a cover of Anita Ward’s “You Can Ring My Bell”. Adam Matta, who appeared on Lumii’s Neptune’s Daughter (2009), beat boxes on five songs, and Rachelle Garniez (composer of the music for Taylor Mac’s Obie-winning epic The Lily’s Revenge) plays claviola on “Bergen and Grand.” In fact, only six of the seventeen tracks do not feature guest musicians.

With his knack for immersing himself in and inspiring other artists of the New York community to join his creative projects, Shirey has become a familiar mainstay of the downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn music scenes. And so I was not expecting him to say that he’s thinking of leaving. Below is our Twitter exchange, which ended with an email (wherein Sxip still condensed his answers into 140 characters or less—amazing!).

OH: Can I ask you some questions for the review? Interested to know whether you did any on-location sound capture around NYC.

SS: No, but my hood is FILLED with sound, I sleep to it, I work to it, I’ve fcked to it…it’s in the body now.

OH: How did you pick the specific locales to write songs about? They’re not all in your hood-unless you live everywhere at once

SS: There are places in New York that I use to center my spirit. These are places where living feels immediate.

OH: Quote on your site says album might be a Dear John to NYC. Thinking of leaving?

SS: Going to Berlin in August and Sept to see if I am moving there!

(via email:)

OH: What happens to the Luminescent Orchestrii if you move to Berlin?

SS: Lumiis are playing a lot less BUT short tour in Oct. and then we plan on Europe anyway.

OH: Why would you consider leaving New York?

SS: Work. I need to work, and we don’t support the avant-garde or the arts here.

Sad, but true. Funding for the arts in Germany—and throughout much of Europe—is more generous and better organized by governments at federal, state, and municipal levels than it is in the U.S. As Americans, we could stand to learn a thing or two from the sense of pride that Germans have in their rich history of art, literature, music, film, theatre, etc., and from the fiscal support system whereby that country continues to nurture its culture.

Political diatribes aside, here is the situational irony into which Sonic New York is born: a talented, one-of-a-kind musician devotes an ingenious album to the city he lives in, yet he leaves that community for one abroad that may more aptly appreciate his work.

For crying out loud, New York. Give something back.

Just read Rob Harvilla’s review of the Sleigh Bells show at the Ridgewood Masonic Temple Monday night. Review was well-written, but that’s per usual from Harvilla. I wasn’t at the show.

I’ll also openly admit that the first time I listened to any tracks by Sleigh Bells was this morning (before reading the Voice review) after seeing them mentioned on Brooklyn Vegan. I’d heard of the band before. Just hadn’t bothered to check out their music. The music is fine.

And I basically don’t care.

Now, I’m trying to wrap my head around this. According to Harvilla, people were screaming in worship of these new hipster gods. But to me, Sleigh Bells sound like bits and pieces of NIN, The Kills, Amanda Blank, and all those female pop singers on the radio whose names I don’t know because they all sound alike–sampled, stirred around a bit, and (per Harvilla) played at an excruciatingly loud volume. Frankly, I’m bored.

This blend of sonic components we’ve already heard in other contexts does not juxtapose genres that are disparate enough to be interesting when combined, and the combination is not cohesive enough to sound to me like anything more original than a Girl Talk mashup. (To be fair, Girl Talk has a heck of a lot of skill–arguably more than Sleigh Bells.)

My point is, if you put carrots, onions, kidney beans, and potatoes into a pot with some water, you haven’t created a new food in the way that you do when you turn flour (and other ingredients) into a pastry via a chemical reaction in your oven. When you make a stew, you chop stuff up and mix it together, but it all pretty much retains its original character, just in smaller pieces and in a different, randomized array. But when you take something as basic and mostly flavorless as flour, yeast, eggs, etc., and turn them into a wedding cake that looks like a Japanese pagoda–well then you’ve done something magnificent.

And that’s how I feel about Sleigh Bells.

This guy rules.

(Thanks to the Seattle Weekly music blog, who found this video first.)

It’s been a long time since an album has been so strong and so as-of-yet unknown that I am inspired to write about it. But such a record has recently impressed me to the extent that I can’t help but review it in detail.

The album is The Plastic Masquerade, by New York-based singer/songwriter/performance artist/musician Minq Vaadka. On this debut, Vaadka (a.k.a. Adam Cochran) mixes impishness and theatricality in a fresh punk/cabaret blend, the likes of which have been missing from that semi-underground scene for far too long (now that Amanda Palmer‘s traded her angst for a ho-hum solo album and an engagement to Neil Gaiman). But, rather than coming across as the next generation of would-be Dresden Dolls, Vaadka is fully original, a bright-pink-paint-besplattered mess of talent.

Distinguishing himself from his cabaret-rock predecessors, Vaadka throws hip-hop influences into his peculiar musical concoction. In “Glitzkrieg,” he chants spoken lyrics over guitar riffs set to three-quarter time. He seems to eschew the understated hipster culture in favor of something more unabashedly flamboyant: “We’re drowning the beggars, the poor bourgeoisie,” he proclaims, “Isn’t it rich to be free?”

The songs both satirize and embrace affectation. In “I Am A Fake,” the first verse describes a woman whose “lips are rubber cement, her breasts of made of jelly, and her belly has been flattened with an iron,” only to reveal that this “perfect” creature is a transvestite; Vaadka then asks, “So why is it that this fake’s more real than you?” This sort of double-flipping of cliches, coupled with unexpected combinations of musical styles, creates delightful surprises for the listener. If there’s a theme to the album, it’s a brash creed of being authentically oneself; paradoxically, everything about Vaadka–from the fake name to the swaggering bravado–registers as completely genuine.

With a voice that could belt a Broadway tune as easily as it fronts a rock band, Vaadka sings like the queer lovechild of Billie Joe Armstrong and Justin Bond. He could have leaped from the cast of “American Idiot” into the Galapagos Art Space, where he and director Sanaz Ghajarrahimi collaborated earlier this year on the performance piece “Orpheus and The Plastic Masquerade.” Ironically, on the album Vaadka laments, “The theatre is dead, and art will soon follow.” But as long as he’s around, we don’t have to worry about that.

Download The Plastic Masquerade on Minq Vaadka’s official site. Get it for free or pay-what-you-wish. I recommend the latter.

Last night at Don Hill’s, I played the first official gig with Love Crushed Velvet.

“Who are Love Crushed Velvet?” you ask. I will tell you. And then you will probably agree with me that I am the luckiest keyboardist in New York.

All LCV songs are written by A.L.X., who’s been performing here and there all over the world for years. He’s this professional jetsetter by day, rocker by night. About two years ago, A.L.X. began to assemble a band of phenomenal musicians to record a soon-to-be-released album, also called Love Crushed Velvet. Check out this lineup:

Jimi Bones – Guitar
Thommy Price – Drums
Enzo – Bass

Time for a little name-dropping. Thommy was Billy Idol’s drummer, and he and Enzo are now in the Blackhearts, i.e. Joan Jett’s band. This summer, they’re touring Europe with Joan, who, along with Hole, is opening for Green Day. (!!) They’ve also toured with Def Leppard and a bunch of other great bands. Jimi, the guitarist, has played with Joan, as well; he’s worked with Blondie and a slew of major players–too many to name. Basically, these guys are pros. Their collective rock history spans decades and includes influential recordings and sold out stadium shows. They’re the real deal.

Anyway, a couple months ago, I responded to a craigslist ad by a guy looking for a PR person to promote his band. Turns out this guy was A.L.X., and I started doing promo work for him along with music marketing guru extraordinaire Paul Burgess.

I now present a breakfast conversation between A.L.X. and me, as we waited for Paul to join us for our first meeting all together.

Me: I’ve noticed you’ve got a lot of synth and keyboard sounds in your music. Do you perform with a keyboardist?

A.L.X.: I’d like to; I’ve just been really lazy about auditioning keyboardists.

Me: I can do it.

A.L.X.: You play keyboards?

Me: Yeah. I have a good one, too.

A.L.X.: Can you sing?

Me: Yeah, I can sing. I mean, I’m not, like, AWESOME, but I can sing.

A.L.X.: Can you sing on pitch?

Me: Of course!

A.L.X.: Ok, well, that solves that problem.

Next thing I know, I’m in a music studio rehearsing with the aforementioned badasses–Thommy, Jimi, Enzo, and A.L.X. Two weeks later, I’m playing a show with them, asking myself how the fuck I lucked into this one.

Will they keep me around? I don’t know. I’d like to stay on and really let loose now that my comfort level with the songs is relatively solid. So, stay tuned. And check out Love Crushed Velvet!

@VoiceStreet and @downtowndiaries both say NYC pop band The Vanguard is going to be huge.

Forget what I think. What’s your opinion? Seriously. I want to know. Tell me what you think.