New Music: The (International) Noise Conspiracy, 8yone, Boba Fettt

The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Bigger Cages Longer Chains (Alternative Tentacles 2007)

The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Live at Oslo Jazz Festival / Alternative Tentacles

Like Michael, I don't have much of a musical ear and I've always been pretty jealous of those who do. I've played recorder, piano and a little xylophone here and there, even remixed a song or two... But with even less musical talent and an ability to read about as much sheet music as David Blunkett, music is such an intangible for me that I sometimes wonder what kind of nerve I have writing about it so much. From what I've gathered over the years, garage is kind of like the Blunkett of rock: You have to not know how to play an instrument to be in a band.

The past decade has changed that, of course. Popular taste and professionalism, what a fickle thing. I can't remember the last time I listened to The (International) Noise Conspiracy; maybe it was in early 2002 when MTV2 still played videos stateside and the world still felt sorry for us. Boy, those were the days. The White Stripes, The Hives vs. The Vines, The Strokes... Yeah man. Garage. Awesome.

But times, like tastes, change dramatically almost by the hour now. It's tough to imagine anything from 2001 being cool anymore (Amnesiac excepted... maybe). But if there's one genre that has stood the test of time, it's garage. So why bother posting on what otherwise must be a fairly standard T(I)NC album that brings no new cards to the table but continues to allow Dennis Lyxzén his pre-Lost Patrol Band indulgences. Wait, sorry, post-Refused. Who cares either way?

Forget the "Sexiest Man in Sweden" award for a minute, though. Maybe it's time to re-think what we know about The (International) Noise Conspiracy. Live at Oslo Jazz Festival is a totally different album from prior efforts and, unless you already knew what the 80-concert, week-long affair was all about, a bit of a surprise to boot. This showcases just a brief segment of that from 2002, but in ten songs Lyxzén and the other four members of the group - collaborating with saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar (This name begs for too many bad jokes) and Fender Rhodes maestro Sven-Eric Dahlberg - retread aged terrain with a fresh perspective that might actually appeal to jazz, funk and garage connossieurs alike. I mean, dig that sax on "Bigger Cages Longer Chains": It's like a whole other group when you add just a saxophone to their sound. The jazzier feel loosens up what was already a pretty good band at what was arguably the top of their game in the summer of '02. In retrospect, it could be argued this performance marks the end of their Indian summer, but I'm not so sure: Everything up to the stirring renditions of "Born Into a Mess" and "Bodyheat" featured here might've just been the preparation. If there was any doubt that The (International) Noise Conspiracy might've been just merely good at one point, Live at Oslo Jazz Festival counters with a defiant statement that they were better than any mediocre contemporary that got featured on more Spin covers and Make Out Club profiles per capita than these five Swedish idealists with a penchant for playing politically charged garage-punk. 2002? A pretty good year.












8yone - Glacial Sunburn (Boltfish 2007)

8yone - Keymotion / Boltfish

And wasn't burning CD-Rs for yourself and your friends so exciting in those days? Boy, I sure do love rhetorical questions. Someday I'll kick the habit, but not before listening to 8yone's latest 3" CD-R. You read that right: Dude just made a four-track EP on three inches of plastic. Well, 1 1/2 if we're talking diameter here. Wait, is that right? I'm so ashamed. I hate math. Point is, songs are good.

We tend to get wrapped up in the intangibles of music so often here at Audiversity partly because we're not musicians. In a way, we're all just kind of passionate music listeners with an above-average grasp on the English language and our ability to communicate what we feel because that's really all music criticism is. Here's a record, here's what I think (rather than what might be objectively true, which may double as a reason for my opinion), hopefully you'll see my side of the story. Ultimately, very little in the sound of music is inherent fact: You can impress somebody with your demonstration of mixophrygian scales, but most people don't know what those are and couldn't care less if you used them in a song. Does it have a beat? Does it take me to a particular moment in my life that I want to remember? Does it make me feel something? These are the questions that separate the technically great from the truly great.

I don't know a whole lot about Matthias Gorf and his methods for creating the music he does; my guess is that he probably has a laptop somewhere in his dwellings of what's known as "the green heart" of Germany in Thuringia. I point this out because his music, demonstrated best on "Glacial Sunburn," sounds like something meant for the countryside. This is IDM or electro or whatever meant for remote parts of northern Europe. Like Hannu or Múm, you just don't expect to hear this coming out of the Mediterranean or Australia; in a way, it's the perfect post-Ibiza come-down. Pop it on as you hit the sack and contemplate the wild time you had fighting the soap suds or swimming in the champagne or whatever it is Ibiza people do these days. If it's not the afterparty, it's the after-hours of a remote German vineyard visited by UFOs and the only people that know about it are Gorf and the listener. The synth stabs shimmer in this song like flickering lights in a poor-quality video. It's distant, it's alien, it's still beautiful and approachable and warm and wait a minute is that alien putting a probe in me and get me out! And yet the beat remains impenetrable, totally steadfast and resolute in its subdued but ever-steady thumping. Maybe all of those descriptions are wrong, after all. Gorf probably had it right the first time: This is what glacial sunburn sounds like, alright. Feels good to me.














Boba Fettt - Wir Ham Alles (feat. Fuat) (No Peanuts 2007)

Boba Fettt - Meister des Universums / No Peanuts

Feeling good and sounding good don't always have to correlate, of course. Some pretty vulgar examples come to mind, but I'll play with the kids on this one and just go with the classic pizza + ice cream theorem. West Berliner Boba Fettt rapping over some pretty disparate beats in his native tongue doesn't sound particularly appealing either, but one listen to Meister des Universums will have you speak-singing a different tune, in another language. With all of those throaty Slavicisms German has, it doesn't inherently sound as smooth or as affable as the Romantic languages, French, Italian, Portuguese, the "languages of love" as it were. But in the right context, German can be used for good: You get all your rolling R's down in Bavaria or Austria and, when it comes to technology or machinery, nothing says "authority" like yelling out "Ich schreie alleine nachts!" (which loosely translates to "I cry alone at night!" but no one will ever know)

Another fine example of German put to good use is this latest release from the Berlin DJ. Using a variety of beats pulled from contemporary chart-topping rap and underground soul-sampling more common to the collegiate in us all, Boba Fettt (who intentionally has a third 'T' on the end) spends 16 songs treading ground that's not necessarily new to listeners in terms of music; instead, his appearances and featured guests (Fuat here on "Wir Ham Alles," or "We Have Everything") highlight the gruff nature of European hip-hop culture in the urbs. It's a remarkable display of mic competence and, even though I only understand about 1/4 of what he's saying (It's been years since I've taken German properly), my guess is that he's walking all over me with some pretty coy jibes.

In fact, there's one thing that music can't always inherently do that foreign languages almost always can: Make you feel stupid and ashamed for not knowing about it more. I'll say this: Boba Fettt doesn't scare me nearly as much as he would've if I were an average music listener partly because I spent the majority of my high school years learning it. So yeah, like I was saying: 2002? A pretty good year.