the lion king

i have a wide and varied music taste. it is something i'm immensely proud of; that i can give adequate time to, and often thoroughly enjoy any type of music (that isn't house or misogynist hip-hop). i even let kanye west into my life for a moment until i saw for myself that he was utter pap.

tonight's gig was pretty far out there in terms of experiencing variety.... yup. it's difficult to explain the animal collective and very difficult to explain who they are and what they do. only that there are only two people i know who've ever heard of them. one is myself, and the other is my old boss and good buddy 'ass' who introduced them to me. they became an invaluable tool in getting through daily life at our old job, where the only way to deal with the irregularities and dystopia of that crazy workplace, was to go back and load the office p.a. system with something even more random and uncontrollable.

step in the animal collective (amongst others*).


for a long time, since i first heard about rave music actually, i've wondered where music was heading. where it would be in 10, 50, 1000 years. in the last hundred it's changed and evolved at a ridiculous pace into uncountable streams almost indecipherable and unrelated to its roots. back in those days i listened to nothing but metal and thought the likes of The Prodigy and The Shamen were bouts of mindless noise akin to mental illness, symptomatic of broken homes and shock treatment. i did know that there were people who found ways to appreciate wider music than me at that time; people who could somehow enjoy meatloaf, biohazard, barry manilow AND 2unlimited. equally.

don't worry i've killed him now.

before i'd reached this audio maturity i did have an inkling that somewhere in the distant future someone would find a way to combine musical genres. someone out there would be able to see a link between hardcore, repetitive dance-centric beats and lyrical, oppressed, melodic flows. my suspicion is that eventually it will all lead to a hundred people sitting in a room listening to 1k tone, but for now i'm very happy to enjoy the animal collective and anything within that genre. if someone could tell me what that genre is, i'd be most grateful.

electronic hardcore punk-rave?
binary soul?
intellectual death drum n' bass metal?

...no idea. but i like it and the gig this evening at koko, camden was an sensual experience in the literal sense of the word; encompassing confusion, pain, wonder and watery eyes. me like.


* also look up:
squarepusher
battles
and steve reich's train album