"Well, I think it's just covering up the fact that you can't write quality analytical essays on music."
From: Jesus.H.Christ, Da Crossroads [onlyson@dacrossroads.com]To: Robert "Brent" DiCrescenzo [robert.dicrescenzo@gte.net]Date: Thursday, September 30, 1999 4:38 PMSubject: Re: milli and vanilli group plays "voltron" in the creamy thighs
my senior year, when your statue fell off the pedestal and did a faceplant in the soft mud of perfect landscaping?
No, I haven't heard it. I never got the promo. I can't get anything from Elektra since I dissed that Flipmode Squad CD. Sorry, I'm just not feelin' Rah Digga. Anyway, I don't think I need to hear the new Stereolab. I'm pretty sure I can guess how it sounds. Granted, I am somewhat omnipotent, but I don't even need that sense to tell me the new stereolab is loaded with gurgling farfisa, monotonous xylophone loops, chiming guitar stabs, ba ba ba duh ba ba, ba duh duh ba ba, ba ba ba duh ba ba, ba duh duh ba be...
"Yeah. I never listen to that Lotion album you gave me, and I rarely read your reviews anymore. You're getting pretty predictable."
"It's hard to get inspired when you have to sit through five CDs a week. It all blends into a miasma of mediocrity."
"Hello? Oh. Hey... Yeah. Yes. I know. I know... I know it's lame. I just can't think of anything... Yeah, the massage parlor again... I know it's nothing like me..."
"Well, she's be the most impatient person I know when it comes to entertainment. If she doesn't like something, she makes it known right off. She would check her watch about twenty times during a movie with dramatic sighs. She would hate the new Stereolab. I'd set the line at about 24.5 watch checks. The funny thing is, when she would check her watch during movies, I would start to feel self- conscious and embarrassed for the movie. In a way, I pity Stereolab. They seem unsure of what to do next. When you have writer's block and a fanbase, you just gotta crank, crank, crank."
"Blue Milk," the stultifying fourteen- minute drone which slowly spins in the middle of Cobra and Phases Group Plays Voltage in the Milky Night like a interest- sucking blackhole, brings to mind Michael Snow's 1967 "short" film "Wavelength," in that it soars to new levels of vexation and artistic solipsism. Actually, Stereolab might take this as a compliment, since they named the first track on Dots and Loops after avant- garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and they evidently lounge around in plastic furniture wearing thick turtlenecks, smoking long- stemmed pipes, and debating the subtle differences between Josef Alberts' blue and yellow paintings.
A slow zoom across a minimally- decorated city loft comprises the entire 45 minutes of "Wavelength." Set to the sound of a constant tone, which gradually increases in pitch, the zoom closes on a framed photograph of ocean waves. This is such a cheeky joke for a supposedly groundbreaking art film. The director drags the viewers through grating boredom to deliver a pun which is obvious from the first frame. Like most avant- garde art, it might have a valid statement, but it's not a process an audience needs to or wants to go through. A brief verbal description would suffice. On Voltage, their eighth LP, Stereolab sink so deep into their socialist cocktail jazz schtick that they typify this flaw. Frigid noodling, insipid harmonies, and unmemorable repetition lazily waft from yawning French- poseurs. Fractions of this soulless wankery might stimulate the academic, but when the album clocks in at nearly twice the length of "Wavelength," it becomes a Herculean test of human attention.
Is this ever going to end? My lord. The album keeps changing styles, but it all sounds exactly the same. There's only so much twinkling vibraphone I can take. Stereolab are beyond hope. They spent more time coming up with the overwrought album title than their "lyrics." The saddest part is that they claim the title is called that strictly because of its length-- they needed it to run that long to "fit into the album design." Um... the album cover is orange atari text on brown. What a fitting analogy for everything that is wrong with Stereolab these days. The liner notes are illegible and gaudy. When a band makes a point of extensively discussing their cover art (which ends up looking last- minute and tacky, regardless) over writing quality songs, you know they've completely lost touch. Even in music, Marxism doesn't work.
Idea for a movie:Louie Anderson is Jim O'Rourke in a lighthearted cyber- tragedy. Jim travels to Japan in 2010 to visit the frozen head of Burt Bacharach. The head is kept in a museum by the docks. When Jim arrives, he finds the museum in disrepair. Burt Bacharach's head watches television from inside a jar. Jim tries lift the spirit of Burt with tales of his work. Jim loves to emulate Burt Bacharach, under the veil of structureless noise. Jim plays Burt a tape he recorded with a band called Stereolab. There are string flourishes and sweeping horns mixed to a dull matte. Burt says, "That's great, baby, but where are the songs?" Jim tells Burt those are the songs. Burt tells Jim that songs need a story, not beatnik freeform. Jim says that he thought Burt was a beatnik. Burt laughs. Burt tells Jim that his having lived in the sixties does not make him a beatnik. Jim cries. Burt tells Jim that he wrote songs for the radio, to make money, and doesn't quite understand art. Aliens invade Japan and Jim is forced to eat the head of Burt Bacharach. Roll credits over blooper reel.
