'Aesthetics is an issue that should be of concern to all people involved in the ultimate selection and design of a noise barrier. It is often felt to be as important as the noise reduction provided by the barrier and is the most subjective of any aspect of noise barrier design, with the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" often used in discussing noise barrier aesthetic treatments. Whether a jagged, stepped, sloped, uniform, non-uniform, colored, plain, straight, curved, or textured barrier is desired at any given location is a decision left to the responsible organization based on its policies and procedures regarding design philosophies, community input, and any other factors which are considered in the decision making process related to barrier aesthetics. Public input should always by considered in the aesthetic design of noise barriers.' -- Federal Highway Administration
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The Hundred in the Hands/Andy Stott Keep It Low'Named after the phrase the Lakota Nation gave to the Fetterman Battle/Massacre of 1866 in Wyoming -- in which Crazy Horse led his warriors to a victory that resulted in the death of 100 white soldiers -- the Hundred in the Hands fuses synthpop with post-punk and dream pop elements. They were influenced by artists such as Young Marble Giants, Wire, New Order, The Cure, De La Soul, Buddy Holly, Broadcast, Gang Gang Dance, and LCD Soundsystem. The Andy Stott remix of the first single from the album is a different beast entirely, with the Modern Love CEO and creator of ‘knackered house’ turning the light pop drama of the original into a soporific, tranquilized march.'-- collaged
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Pelt NewDelhi Blues
'Pelt were formed by guitarists Mike Gangloff and Skip James Connell in 1993 in Richmond (Virginia). With Pat Best and Jack Rose. Unlike other pursuers of the lysergic gospel, Pelt rarely sacrifice chaos for the sake of melody (Total Denigration is the only "acid ballad"). They stick to noise as the medium and as the end. Each track eventually loses its identity and leaves only sonic debris behind. The album is played with virtually no percussions: guitars are more than enough to raise this kind of hell.'-- collaged
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High Wolf RTT
'France’s High Wolf possesses a natural-born ability to zero in on the tones most conducive to inducing transcendental states. Prolific without wearing out his welcome, this guitarist and manipulator of effects boxes looses fervid streams of fever-dreamy drones that suffuse any room they enter with mystery. High Wolf’s tracks carry the uncanny sense of sounding as if they’ve been sluicing since the beginning of time, and that he had the graciousness to siphon them for teasingly brief absorption before they shimmer off to the vanishing point. This elite droneur is one of the few musicians who could title a release A Guide To Healing without it coming off as an ironic gesture or a laughable boast.'-- holymountain.com
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Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin Vaccination (For Thomas Mann)
'In the world of instrumental electronic music, you're nothing without your own sound. Without vocals and without an instrument that you can manipulate with your body, it's harder to insert "you" into the music. And harder still to have that "you" be so thoroughly "you" that listeners pick up on it and can identify you from your sonics alone. Both Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin (better known as Oneohtrix Point Never) have gotten there. Each has his own aesthetic and you can hear them inside of it. Hecker's is more immediately identifiable. Since 2001, he's created a run of good-to-amazing albums that are typically built on static and shifting drones, number-crunching music that is also intensely physical and tactile. Lopatin's approach is comparatively playful and also more steeped in appropriation, as he finds ways to incorporate the cast-off music of the past and make something that is both affecting and very much of this moment.'-- Mark Richardson, Pitchfork
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Natural Snow Buildings Live at Hebden Bridge Trades Club, UK
'This prolific duo have already logged over 20 releases in eight short years, not including numerous side projects. Drone and other forms of minimalist music is fairly easy to duplicate but when it takes on spiritual dimensions and transports it to holy places, it’s an all-too-rare experience in the currently glutted experimental music scene. Natural Snow Buildings are definitely one of those bands that possess the brute power and fertile imagination to transcend and ascend above the humming hive of clone drones. If you’re digging the recent rash of drone and minimalist bands, this should prove to be a jewel shining out of the mire.'-- Cult#MTL
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Kevin Drumm Live @ Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival
'Kevin Drumm’s greatest successes in his long career have occurred when the chaos of his music utterly overwhelms the listener’s sense of authorship. Of course, he’s always in control, but quite early on, with albums like the classic Sheer Hellish Miasma or Horror of Birth, the illusion of reckless abandonment to sonic violence overtakes any sense that anything other than some mad, inhuman force controls what we’re hearing. Such a feeling might derive from a number of sources: sensory and affective overload, the sheer impenetrability of the architecture of the piece, the inability to determine the source of the sounds, activation of fear and pleasure centers in the brain, or finally just total immersion. With so few gaps in the musical landscape, there is no time to think.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes
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Holly Herndon Movement
'Electronic music meant for clubs tends to get shelved far away from work by academic composers. But within Holly Herndon's immersive soundscapes, the dance floor is always just a step away from the lecture hall. The San Francisco musician bridges brainy compositions with techno sensibilities on her debut album, "Movement," drawing equally from traditions founded by avant-garde heavies like Karlheinz Stockhausen and techno legends like Kevin Saunderson. Herndon has a solid background in both worlds, so her approach doesn't sound forced. She's working toward an electronic music doctorate at Stanford these days, but her obsession with programmed sounds started in Berlin, where she began haunting nightclubs as a teenage exchange student.'-- SFGate
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ZS Live @ SXSW
'ZS's music has described as "brutal-prog", "brutal chamber", "post-minimalism" among others. They have said their music is sometimes either very loud or very soft and also says on their website that "it is primarily concerned with making music that challenges the physical and mental limitations of both performer and listener. Manipulating extended technique, unique instrumental synthesis, and near telepathic communication, ZS aims to create works that envelop the listener and unfold sonically over time, evoking unspoken past, present, and future rites and ritual."' -- discogs
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Silent Servant Invocation of Lust
'Juan Mendez, aka Silent Servant, has stoically been serving the darkened, after-hours crowd something decent by which to swing and sway for well over a decade. His sizable oeuvre on the Historia y Violencia label, and with the on-hiatus Sandwell District collective, is among the best no-bullshit techno of the naughties. In Gilles Deleuze's prophetic ideological diatribe Postscript on the Societies of Control, he writes, "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." It's up to each of us to determine which masters we serve, and Mendez is ultimately in the service of something quite sacred: the bloody dance floor.'-- The Quietus
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Bee Mask Live @ the Tribal Haus
'So much of writing about music is about scale. Something is 'expansive' or 'contained'; 'claustrophobic' or 'cavernous'. It's rare for something to be described as microscopic; music seems to exist at a scale that we can immediately apprehend. But Bee Mask (aka Chris Madak) makes synthesiser drone and low voltage hum that sounds like peering through a microscope. Which gives it a grandeur all its own. Maybe Wagner should have eschewed magical rings and valkyries for alleles and corpuscles.'-- Three Thousand
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Shed I Come By Night
'Sonic fragments seethe. Tarnished acid bubbles oscillate. Snatches of melody are confused and irregular, the awkward interior facets glowing with longevity. It suffocates with its bulk. An uneasy vocal fragment swings back and forth over yet more scorched terrain as blistered, uncouth and jagged ideas protrude from Shed's minimal landscapes. Shed hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but he has captivated us with his sonic mottle, daubed onto the classic edifice of techno’s irresistible structures. Techno can appear one of purest genres, and we’ll thrive here in its warm breath forever.'-- Matthew Bennett
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Forma OFF
'Forma's debut was a welcome ray of light in the usually pensive, doom-ridden synth scene, and the trio's mischievousness is thrown into overdrive on 'Off/On'. We've already established that the band have an enviable collection of real analogue gear, and they put it to great use here building on the templates set out by Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter back in the late 70s. 'Off/On' is far from simplistic retro fetishism however and while the tracks have an eerie quality, there's a brightness that you'd rarely expect to find on most records of this kind. Maybe it's a nod to synth pioneer Jean Michelle Jarre (just check 'FORMA278') but it sounds like the band are formulating a core sound, something that defies simple characterization.'-- boomkat
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Raime We Must Hunt Under The Wreckage of Many Systems
'Raime are an enigmatic London-based duo seeking to re-establish electronic composition as a physical and emotionally inquisitive force. Their music offers a creeping, unavoidable sonic truth, moving steady and relentless from the speakers and weaving vast waves of sound, both beautifully intricate and artfully industrial, around gut-shaking rhythm cycles. Raime draw explicit inspiration from the marginal mavericks of early European goth, minimal dance and synth wave - artists largely omitted from the current master narrative of post-punk history, who strove to make music at once cerebral and visceral, futuristic and atavistic.'-- numusic.no
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p.s. Hey. So, I guess I should say, wow, the world didn't end, etc.! ** Alan, My favorite is 'Serial Mom'. Right behind it would be 'Female Trouble' and then 'Cecil B. Demented', I think. ** Unknown/ Pascal, Hey, initially mysterious Pascal! Equipment from 2002, yikes. Does it have a floppy disc port? Uh, tomorrow's post doesn't have any videos, so if you and your gray-haired comp can hang in here until then, it should get okay for the weekend at least. Man, I so appreciate you saying that about George. It means so much. And your typing his name even means a lot because creating meaning and feeling and memory for him is maybe the most important goal of my work. I wouldn't be who I am as a person and maybe wouldn't even be a writer, or certainly not the writer I am, if it wasn't for him. He meant the world to me, and his death is almost unbearable, and creating work in his memory and for him is so little, but it feels like a necessity, and it's all I can do. Anyway, really, thank you for saying that, Pascal. It is a shame that 'Wide Sargasso Sea' is Rhys' calling card, although it seems that, as time goes on, the earlier novels are catching up. Dude, heavily awesome about the 'Finnegan's Wake' themed day! That's thrilling! Thank you so much for that! If I don't talk to you before, may Dublin transfigure into a fest in your presence. ** 5STRINGS. That is Xmas cheer if I ever saw it. You've got the whole image stack in your hands. Everyone, one of the savviest maestros of the image stack genre aka 5STRINGS made a Xmas pile. I'm happy to announce that it awaits you here. So, you want to look like them? Interesting. Really, you choose middle-aged C. Thomas Howell over the Tiger Beat one? That's interesting too. Nah, I think my ass is a recluse for some sort of good reason. Don't worry about it. It's as snug as a bug in a rug. You probably have more fun, but I'm cool with the funnish. Oh, yeah, Analbook is cool, and the privacy issues are so much less problematic there. ** Will, It just occurred to me, all credit to you, that being scatter-brained is an essential part of celebrating. I wonder if that's true. Seems like it. Not to mention the obliterating of patterns. You did the celebratory proud, man, it sounds like. Never have watched a moment of 'American Horror Story'. I had a chance in LA to watch an episode when in LA, but I was told that I should watch the series from the beginning, so I begged off. But I will. It seems like the show right now. I have seen four episodes of 'The Walking Dead', and I did quite dig it. Thanks about the post. No, I haven't watched that lecture on 'Boom'. Man, yeah, it sounds like a must. I'll go find it. Thanks re: my holidays. Mine should be quiet in the nice way, and I hope yours find the perfect balance between input and output that makes it qualify for membership in the sublime. ** Scunnard, Hey. Mm, I think maybe because John and I are friends and because he reads my blog, that made a Day seem daunting or something, I don't know. I hope he liked it, gulp. Sometimes I feel like that Dennis Cooper baby's parents are deliberately playing with the similar name thing, but I'm probably dreaming. One of their videos is called 'Dennis Cooper meets Richard Branson'. I mean, I don't know, what do you think? Until I pronounce your name in your presence and you look at me agog, I will maintain that those who can't pronounce your name properly are vocal cord-challenged. I saw your email in my box this morning. I'll open it and write to you today. No problemo, man. ** Cobaltfram, I'll write to you today too. Yesterday got away from me. But I got the email, and, yeah, awesome! I want to see 'The Hobbit'. The 48 frames rate thing is just too enticing. And I loved the 'LotR' movies, and I'm not ashamed to say that. Okay, I'll get the pen, and, gosh, there are probably all sorts of things that my coked up birthday whore will be able to do with it if I remember to max out my ATM withdrawal limit first. Oh, right, I'll ask John, but, yeah, he won't mind 'cos he's like that. And the whole movie is watchable on Youtube, so he obviously doesn't care re: that. ** Rewritedept, Hey. I figured the Hans thing wasn't a stroke of genius on my part. Your name is Italian. Hooray for my psychic abilities. Little noses are cool 'cos noses keep growing, as you undoubtedly know, and so you'll probably have a biggish nose on your eventual deathbed, and you can die with a perfectly organized face, which seems like it would be better than not. Sucks about your shittily malaisey day. However, nice about the mystery solutions. Hope the pot helped. It can do that. ** David Ehrenstein, I second everything you said about John. He really is just about the nicest, kindest, most generous person in the world, in addition to his mega-talents. I'll have to get that 'Cry Baby' DVD. Cool. ** Billy Lloyd, I might not get to go either since I stupidly have still not bought a ticket. Sheesh. I do that too. I mean, I eat almost the exact same thing every day for forever, and I have no problem with that. Maybe I'm part automobile or something. So, the noodles were a great shock to the system, and I'm already tempted to get on their track. Whenever I've been in London, it seems like everybody there is drunk as soon as it gets dark, so being there with a non-fluid based head-oriented high seems like it's the way to go. Well, you should move to, like, Rome then. Although the Italians aren't the best English speakers. Or you could learn Italian. Or ... hm. Some places are made for great visits and not for great living. I feel that way about NYC, but people who live there think it's great, and both times I lived there, I thought it was great for about a year before I went, Get me the fuck out of here. Well, I get the feeling most people here would recommend that you start your John Waters experience with 'Female Trouble'. You certainly can't go wrong if you start there. I'll toss in my favorite, 'Serial Mom', as another option. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill. Nice pair of saints you've got there. Interesting about how the film seemed to differ with that audience in tow. And it survived the shift with your respect in tact. That's interesting too. Nice, man. ** Steevee, Calling Divine John's 'longtime companion' is a weird way to put it. No, they were never a couple in that sense at all. I'll go find your 'Zero Dark Thirty' review. Hold on. Oh, there it is. Great, excited to read it. Everyone, here is the always very savvy, brainy Steevee's review of 'Zero Dark Thirty'. As always with his writings, a must read. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, that would be really fantastic if you can come to Paris for Mike's retrospective. I would finally get to meet you and hang out with you, which would be major. And I would love to meet your mom. Yeah, keep me posted, and, if you need any Paris advice in any way, just let me know. Great! That is an awesome artwork idea, man. Way to use a title too, ha ha. Sweet. Obviously, go for it. ** Paul Curran, Yeah, about the Watersian here. Ha. Google Plus ate you. Me too. There's something creepy there, but I guess we're long since Google's bitches. ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott. Kind of amazing how John aced that beloved cultural icon shift. Especially given that he has to be the least careerist, back-stabbing guy ever. John's a good friend of mine, and, yes, he is utterly down to earth and kind and great. I don't know how he has managed to stay like that given the massiveness of his fame. One of the rare examples of how fame doesn't inherently corrupt. Yeah, same deal here in France. There's a deep-seeded paranoia that is peculiar to the US. And to Russia also, at least, but, in Russia's case, it's thoroughly understandable, but in the States, it seems like a strange contagion or something. Okay, yeah, see, those three ideas are all really, really good. Just reading them gets my brain fleshing them out. I can see why it's hard to choose, but, on the other hand, it's not like the ones you don't pick first will go away or start seeming less interesting. Mm, I don't think I ever start with ideas like that in mind. I feel like I always start with the same idea, and then I try to open it up more widely or in a different way. Usually, when I get what I think is a good idea akin to the kind you're talking about, I'm already writing something, and then I just incorporate it into what I'm already building as an additional trajectory or side-trip or something. Like, say, in 'TMS', the Flatsos thing, which I'm kind of proud of. That erupted or bloomed in process. I don't know. Does that make any sense? I reserved the second Buche yesterday, and I'll see it/pick it up on Monday. It's this one. Yury and I took a vote, and that Buche won. Hope that work didn't overwork you yesterday. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hey, Jeff. I know, weird about the late breaking John Waters Day. Thanks about it. Glad your roof is secured. No, I have no skills in that regard at all. I'm okay at thinking and talking my way through crises in a practical way, but when it comes to handiwork, I'm all thumbs. I don't even know how to take a photo with my iPhone even though Yury has explained how to do that simple thing to me over and over. No, I haven't that guy's earlier film, but I want to now, of course. I did know that he's von Trier's nephew, and I'm so glad that the apple fell that far away from the tree, ha ha. ** Sypha, It's only the early John Waters films that have the 'gross out' thing. Watch 'Serial Mom'. It's not gross in the slightest, and it's fucking hilarious, and you'll like it, I'm pretty sure. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, man! Thanks for thinking of me. Yeah, nice about the Bresson bit in 'IJ'. I had a really good talk with David about Bresson once. Beautiful paragraph about perpetual adolescence. Really beautiful. Probably the same, in my case, I guess. But I have no idea how people become totally adult like they so often do. I can't figure it out. What made that happen? Did it happen in a flash, or was there an ongoing erosion of some sort that 'matured' them, or what? It's a total mystery to me. I feel like I've just always lived my life and paid attention to everything like you're supposed to do, and it makes sense that I wouldn't have really changed that much. Why people change so drastically post-adolescence makes no sense to me. I don't know, man. It's interesting, I think you and me, we should be happy to be overgrown kids, you know? A hit single? Awesome. Get that shit down on tape, or, uh, into technology's memory storage, or however they do that these days, ha ha. You will totally finish the novel next year. Crazy, right? But you will. And how great is that going to feel not to mention be. Love to you, buddy, and have a Xmas with a bold, italicized X, and enjoy your access to American holiday food that I sorely lack. You can't find eggnog here to save your life, man. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. It seems preserved and to be nourishing itself to me. When some say something, it's always important to remember that it's just some, and it's only some for a good reason, or I try to remember that. Welch is so wonderful, isn't he? I know, I agree. Thank you, my friend. ** Marc Vallée, Hi, Marc! How great to see you! Early very Merry Xmas! Thanks about the JWD. No, I hadn't caught your Year End List. Thank you. I'll read passionately and in detail in just a minute since I think you're the last commenter of the day. Everyone, the great photographer and all around top notch fella Marc Vallée has posted his 'END OF YEAR REVIEW: MY TOP TEN PICTURES', and that is your cue to click this. You'll be glad. Oh, man, I would love to get the zines. Thank you so much! My address du jour is: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. Thanks a bunch, Marc! And it's really great to see you! ** Okay. Seeing as how the world hasn't ended yet, I propose you attend a gig today. Most of you probably won't, but it would be cool and potentially rewarding if you do. In any case, tomorrow I'll see you.