A Post Punk Tumblr

Talking Heads (via jasontheexploder, bunnysuit)

Talulah Gosh - Don’t Go Away

Here’s some twee for your Friday.

Konono N°1 - Paradiso

emusic describes Congotronics as “Jimi Hendrix meets Talking Heads in the heart of the Congo” on their top albums of the decade list. I could not resist the Remain In Light-baiting and dove in. I still have to fully digest the album, but those amped up thumb pianos hit a sweet spot between tone and distortion.

Anywho Allmusic does a fascinating history report on their review:

This amazing record is the product of utility, coincidence, and accidental discovery as much as it is a product of academic deliberation, and it manages to sound old and traditional even as it is refreshingly (even radically) new and avant-garde. Konono No. 1 was formed in the 1980s by a group of Bazombo musicians, dancers, and singers from the Democratic Republic of Congo to play traditional likembe (thumb piano) music in the streets. They soon discovered, though, that they needed amplification to be heard and — this is where the story of this album really begins — they took a DIY and utilitarian approach by building their own amplification systems out of junked car parts, magnets, and other flotsam. Once assembled, the system produced a huge hum that Konono No. 1 embraced as part of the sound of the group. At the center of everything were three amped-up thumb pianos tuned to three different registers, and coupled with all manner of pots, pans, whistles, and brake drum snares for percussion and with the vocals blasting through megaphones, all embedded in the huge buzz and hum of the homemade PA system, the group accidentally created a sound that was at once both ancient and traditional and yet eerily akin to experimental 21st century electronica. Congotronics is Konono’s second album (the first was a live outing entitled Lubuaku), and while it was ostensibly recorded in a studio setting, it sounds wonderfully live and immediate, as if the dozen members of the group were standing on a busy street corner like some Congolese version of a second-line Mardi Gras band, only with thumb pianos instead of horns. Musical themes emerge and reemerge in the various tracks, and what sounds initially chaotic and random is revealed to be nothing of the sort, giving the whole album the feel of a ragged, joyous suite. Part traditional, part African rhumba, part smart avant-garde electronica, Congotronics is the sound of an urban junkyard band simultaneously weaving the past and the future into one amazingly coherent structure, and not only that, you can dance to it. This is the band Tom Waits has been looking for all his life.

Fuck Buttons - “Flight of the Feathered Serpent”

I’ve had Tarot Sport on repeat all week. I’m tempted to say something bombastic about how it restores my faith in The Album but really it’s sequenced and flows like a dance mix, so long live The Dance Mix! Anyway, I wrote about it on tuneage and used the word skronk for first time in my life, so here’s some synergy:

Well these guys have stepped their game up! Their 2008 debut Street Horrrsing delivered a nice hypnotic mix of noisy skronk, electronic texture, tribal rhythms and other buzzy signifiers. What makes the band distinctive, of course, is that they are not afraid to get epic—see “Sweet Love for Planet Earth”. Their recent release, Tarot Sport, delivers more of their signature sound, but the approach is streamlined and the band makes greater use of electronic rhythms. The album-closing double whammy of “Space Mountain” and “Flight of the Feathered Serpent” is enthralling—part dance work-out and part noise bliss-out, quite worthy of the epic titles.

Images for Gray Matter - Food For Thought

Gray Matter - Retrospect

tumbledore:

D.C. post-hardcore from 1984.

Ian Dury - Spasticus Autisticus

Wonderful groove. Wikipedia says:

His 1981 song “Spasticus Autisticus” - written by Dury to show his savage disdain for that year’s International Year of Disabled Persons, which he saw as patronising and counter-productive - was banned by the BBC despite having been written by a disabled person (Dury having been left crippled by childhood polio).

(audio via feastingonroadkill)

The Icicle Works - Hollow Horse

The Smiths - Stretch Out and Wait [alternate vocal]

This version of “Stretch Out and Wait” recently made the rounds in my circle of Smiths-appreciating friends. It’s not a drastically different version: just some slight lyrical changes and some melodic variations. It’s quite lovely how the song rocks back and forth like a kind of angsty lullaby—stretch out and sleep! I’m not sure if Morrissey is talking about getting it on (“ignore all the codes of the day / let your juvenile impulses sway”) or not getting it on (“stretch out and wait”) or some other forces of nature pushing us around. But it doesn’t matter; for me it’s all about that swaying, oscillating carelessly between meanings and images, this way and that way, this way and that way.

via jhnbrssndn, situationist

rocketsandrayguns: Here Come the Warm Pets

I Might Walk Home Alone

Shine! - Bite the Apple

Submitted by debbipete:

from a compilation called I Might Walk Home Alone that I picked up in the bargain bin of an Italian record shop in 2000.

Great jangle pop obscuro with wonderful drums.

Philip Glass Ensemble - ‘Train/Spaceship’, Part 1 [1982]

merlin:

from Einstein on the Beach

It’s like watching someone do their taxes. In base-2. And Esperanto. As a palindrome.

And yet? Still gives me a giant arpeggioboner.

Excuse me while I go through a Philip Glass phase now.