"The theme: Why am I so attracted to that which I know is bad for me?"

Lou Reed in a longish interview with LA Weekly's John Payne on his new album The Raven.

The new album features some interesting guest musicians like Ornette Coleman, David Bowie, Willem Dafoe as narrator and Lou's wife Laurie Anderson of course.

In the interview Lou complains already about all the people who are going to listen to the album on mp3 and will miss the subtleties of the sound. Personally I suspect that there are only very few people capable of distinguishing a compressed mp3 from a normal CD. I am very interested in the new Massive Attack CD as I find the mp3s of a pretty high quality and would like to test if I can hear the difference.

An interesting bit on a track called Fire Music:

P.S. Six tracks (90 seconds each I think) can be streamed here.

There is a new album titled Summer Sun out on April 8th. An mp3 of the song Don't Have To Be So Sad (also on the EP Sleep and Release to be released on Februry 18th) is already available here on the Matador site. A laid-back warm and calm downbeat song very much in the vein of And Then Nothing.... Pitchfork provides the tracklisting and US tour dates and reports:

You can stream the whole new album here. Marcello writes on it here.

I have never been a real fan of Will Oldham. But I always liked his music. The 1st Palace Brothers was rough but it was worth it. Anyways Will Oldham's new album sounds like I would have liked the latest Beck album to sound. Apparently it has been produced by the same guy as the last Lambchop album. The kind of low-key production I absolutely adore.

There are threads at the music forum I Love Music on three older bands I have heard a lot of good things about but which I have hardly ever listened to:

A Spacemen 3 re-evaluation Apparently Christgau described their music as "Stooges for Airports" with "Airports" like in Music for Airports, Eno's first real ambient album which I never got into. I guess the title of one of their albums Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs to says a lot about their hypnotic, minimal, fuzzy sound. I heard some mp3s and liked them. Probably I should dig deeper. BTW I dislike the orchestral megalomaniac music I heard from Spiritualized, Jason Pierce's new band.

Boredoms S/D A Japanese garage outfit. Heard some mp3s I liked. After what I had read about them before I imagined them more hardcore. More in the direction of Merzbow. Which I don't really know neither but which are supposed to be very noisy.

Magazine - Classic Or Dud? and Magazine "Real Life" I think I have never heard anything by Howard Devoto's second band after he left the Buzzcocks. Momus is a big fan. Magazine somehow seem to be the other arty post-punk band besides Wire.

6421 Schnell angucken! 5155 Ouml; 5035 Leaked DOOM 3 demo on the net? 4546 Getting a new, community funded server for antville.org 3184 Antville server fund 2346 Gefunden 2131 ich schieß den pc von meinem papa ab 1853 pressen sie das bild... 1768 Agent Provocateur 1669 Das wahre Chili con Carne 1414 serial killer 1376 Die coolste optische Täuschung ever 1340 der pc von meim papa geht wieder, teil II 1294 Neonode N1 1051 Die Zukunft wie die Generation halb so alt wie ich sie sieht. 1006 Redaktion zu verkaufen. 986 Muss eine Frau sich RASIEREN? 970 Was bedeutet das? 945 Vollzeitmaschine 943 Order Your Lowrider Bicycles Online! 919 Smack My Bitch Up 890 100th Window. 875 Schon mal darüber nachgedacht, 871 RDS-Autoradio mit MP3 844 Topless Girls Here 806 Loose Fur live mp3s 793 domo-kun 791 Der Deutsche Sonderweg (Charts) 754 Google zensiert 718 Steuersong 676 Warum gibt es keine guten Pornos? 662 witz, schlecht und dreckig 655 What do we mean when we say "mundtot"? 648 Röyksoop - Remind Me 643 Ästhetik-Terror im Swingerclub 641 Berlin ganz im Zeichen der Brezel 637 Froschfotzenleder 636 Gibt es das? 632 Sperma macht glücklich! 629 Selbstgespräch über Herrn Walser. Man siezt sich.

Falls ich jemanden vergessen habe, bitte melden!

P.S. Das ist alles Humbug. Die ersten 13 Stories von diesem Weblog hier sind alle vor der o.g. Nummer 1.

Der neue Topspot mit 53849 Seitenabrufen ist One for the ladies

in Marcello Carlin's words:

I don't know Houellebecq personally and I don't really want to but after such a statement I can't refrain from hating him. No. I exaggerate. It is more that I am nauseated. And that I feel extremely sorry for him.

It also bothers me that what he writes here seems as honest as e.g. Rousseau in his Confessions but at the same time he lives on creating scandals with exactly this kind of confessional writing. And he lives quite well according to the sales of his books.

Of course there is also the possibility that Houellebecq makes all this up. I don't believe that but I wouldn't like him more if this was the truth.

On the other hand there is something fascinating about Houellebecq. Something irresistible. I feel like a moth flying into the flame when I read his texts. This small essay on cloning reminds me of the dilemma of the scientists who developed the atomic bomb which was so well described by Dürrenmatt in Die Physiker and which can be condensed into two sentences:

and

One of the first weblogs which ever linked to me is in full blossom again after a couple of weeks of rather sparse posting. Badgerminor has been posting lots of stuff on music in the morning and in the afternoon during the last two days.

I have always been perplexed how similar our musical tastes were. It might not be as surprising that we both love Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but we also share dislikes. He writes that he lost interest in the Smashing Pumpkins after Gish which still is my favourite of theirs. Hypnotic and psychedelic at the same time (in 1991/92 My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and Gish were the sonic spaceships for my mind odysseys). The tracks I downloaded from the new Zwan album didn't do anything for me as well: ok tunes but nothing remarkable. He doesn't like Sigur Ros, I hate their pretentious sounding overproduced ambientish artificiality (German Amazon review). Last but not least Radiohead's most critically acclaimed album OK Computer left me totally cold, Badger says "it sails right over his head".

I'd really like to know what he thinks of the new Massive Attack. There is something profound about it in the sense that it perfectly captures the current tense and sinister atmosphere though the vocal deliveries of O'Connor and Horace Andy are not really my cup of tea.

P.S. I am just listening to 100th Window again and realizing that I don't like 3D's voice neither (at least in the 1st song Future Proof). Maybe the only voice I ever liked in Massive Attack was Liz Fraser's. Though Daddy G was a nice change to the others. Bizarre that I like Massive Attack's music a lot but I don't like their singers. Did Tricky ever sing for them? I don't like his voice neither...

Yahoo! News - Verizon Must Reveal Internet Song Swapper (via planing lakes)