pop music

Ciao Manhattan… Sunset Genesis in the Living Lens of Perfect Illusion

Soundtrek, TK:LA, Vinyl Mind Flow

Three years later: Perfect Illusion; welcome to the new testament.

^ #thatsliterallygoingtobetheonlyfeaturedreferencedirectlyexplainingwhatanyofthatmeans

Perfect Illusion, as its own release is a mirror, an aural gaze inside the disco boulder of sonic self-realization. Building scene from a grain of salt, mother of pearl emerging from this her world oyster, three lifetimes later emerges the post-pressurized diamond, setting sail from Shangri-La, steady rolling along the PCH with a rhythmic detour down Laurel Canyon, from rebel hippie rock through the Sunset Strip’s Electric Ladyland until we settle in the gapless gallivance of Xanadu’s disco wonderland – that living pantheon for all Angeles-bound-and-stellar-bred cosmic artists.

That boulder, that diamond, that crystal gem here finds its sonic identity in the literal pop; that cataclysmic synthesis of hard rock and disco inferno – that blast to birth the boulder’s mirrored glass.

So here, as its own entity, Perfect Illusion is the synergy of Golden Coast tones maximalized and harmonized with that most signature human chord, to the point of genre eradication in the face of just well-crafted tribal opus soundtracking. Rock, Folk, Disco, R&B (check the background vocals, kids, some kind of rhythmic blue), together, in a manner most-threatening to the sonic status quo… any time we merge those most marginalized Canyon dwellers, city slickers, urban denizens, soulmen, cosmic dancers, punk rockers, jazz cats, and funk grooveallegiant together in that secret space of aural invisible, we usurp the very system that gentrifies through genre and “mainstreaming.” Welp, with Mark Ronson, Kevin Parker, BloodPop, and Josh Homme (get it, Queens of the Stone Age… get it, Radio… GaGa… Queen… of the… never mind) on soundboard as the latest four Gospel Unicornmen of the Apopcalypse squad: buckle up buttercup, bricks-and-string are back on the airwaves #catchthebeat

Perfect Illusion, as the lead single of a comprehensive record album, is the first law of universal dynamics; the Law of Mentalism: the all is mind, the universe is mental.

per·fect
adjective: ˈpərfikt/

  1. having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.

verb: pərˈfekt/

  1. make (something) completely free from faults or defects, or as close to such a condition as possible

+

il·lu·sion
noun: iˈlo͞oZHən/

  1. a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses.

=

TL TULOMTULOM FTK

read: this life and this record are your perfect illusion, so… perfect the illusion and manifest mental reality #FREEYOURMIND

Mathemagical, isn’t it? #itsallmakebelieveisntit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

***

Continue reading →

The De Jure, The De Facto, The Glory of Britney Spears’ Tribal Gospel

Anthropopogy // Culture, Soundtrek, TK:LA

First things first: #HOWCANYOUREADTHISTHERESNOPICTURES
Second things next: Sort it out, education is the motivation #Literacy #ImaginationPassport #GetToWork
Here's a motion picture, focus and find your chill #letsread

Here’s a motion picture, focus and find your chill #letsread

*And now: our regularly scheduled programming*

So… in the two years and miscellany of months since Britney Jean… many dramatic learning scenarios have unfolded… for the shown world, and both a one Miss Britney Jean Spears, and mutually exclusively, myself #swiperitsnotaboutyou #iknow #itsalwaysbeenaboutdora #yesiknow #everypopstarisdora #igetit #keepitmoving #peoplearetryingtoreadhere #wellnotherehere #noonereadsthis #probablybecausetherestoomanyinsecurehashtags #anyway

Much like Britney Jean, said Spears nor myself have anything to prove in this latest iteration… except the reality that we live our lives as tales to be told, we record said lives to manifest alchemical gold, and beyond any and all else, we eclipse the great with the good, and actively oppose the established fallacy that human lives are nothing more than fails to be sold… which, effectually, is the everything; because Glory finds and founds itself in the amplified actualization of De Facto over De Jure Millennial Pop music culture identity, it breeds: I applaud and advocate for Glory; because I, along with a camaraderie of unbeknownst-to-us-then-undeniable-to-the-world-now Army officials, find and found the self in this relentlessly resilient tribe of born-and-bred Millennial Pop music culture creatives, I proceed.

#LETSGETINTELLECTUAL #INANANTIESTABLISHMENTARIANKINDOFWAY #LIKEWEALWAYSDOATTHISTIME #WITHUNNECESSARILYEGREGIOUSAMOUNTSOFIMPROPERLYPLACEDRHYME

So, without further ado (“without further ado…” it’s all melodramatic – get what the kids want and have fun with it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) the de jure, the de facto, the one-off story riffing about the Glory that is this marvelous ninth record album from millennial cult pop tribe leader Britney Spears…

De Jure

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer, dancer and actress. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana.

glory (noun) glo·ry \ˈglȯr-ē\

1. something that is a source of honor, fame, or admiration; a distinguished ornament or an object of pride

2. a state of absolute happiness, gratification, contentment, etc.

3. a ring or spot of light: as

a: aureole

b:  a halo appearing around the shadow of an object

De Facto

Britney Spears exists as the living pop canon of the TRL Generation: period, unequivocally; Glory exists as said Generation’s anthem battle hymn and opus tribal frequency. #OurBattlefieldIsSpectacularPrivatizedPublicity #YourVibeAttractsYourTribe

For the record:

Continue reading →

Vinyl Cut Prose: Britney Jean

Pop Culture, Soundtrek, TK:LA, TrapperKeeper, Vinyl Cut Prose

I’ve spent the past two years since Femme Fatale mastering the art and science of global media and communication with Britney as my canon. I don’t really need to prove anything, and apparently neither does she; because Britney Jean founds and finds itself in that, it breathes … I appreciate Britney Jean.

Holding the thread close to a dream, while intelligence becomes the steal
For what if gold, showed token sold, while manners abright and rightfully bold
Make a wish, a princess dream, unfold the map, a small lil bean
To vanish the air and trace out the new, so scared to love, so soon who knew
Beautiful voice creeps in my head, only one person person can wear this red
Traces behavior, young and small; I see land, I must fall

 – Britney Jean

Linger in the legacy… intelligence as the steal is Britney Jean – no, she is not GaGa, nor Madonna, nor is hers the aspired claim on their cerebral domain, that knowledge which detaches one from visceral humanity… that spark to light the first morning star. Yet, only one can wear the red, the Scarlet Letter Britney dons instead… And so seeing land, she must fall; that grounding rooting the human and iconic plight – from dust we came and to dust we return, no matter how high the peak flight.

131101-britney-spears-musical

This is the record of someone who’s already been where you want her to stay, but that’s the point – you can’t evolve, and still return to that place unchanged. But you’ll never see it that way, because you’re not thee.

Revealing itself much like a sunset over the Hollywood Hills… we have an aural venture through lightly hued layers of majestic technicolor faded, ascending as a systematic rise within the naturally spectacular, muted neon chromatic escalating to the heavens, forever rooted in the Canyon, steady upon the capitalized moniker of America’s finest institution – studio stardom.

Continue reading →

Crate Dig: My First Blog Post #ever #kindof

Anthropopogy // Culture, Deconstruction, Pop Culture, Soundtrek, TK:DC, TrapperKeeper, Vinyl Mind Flow

Stumbled across my now-defunct first blog from back in 2007 #thatyear and in the past six years… not much has changed at all… what can I say?

For the sake of morbid curiosity… from October 2007… my first blog post… #itsadoosie #notheresnopictures

swiper sighs manifesto

So until I figure out this whole music blog thing i’ll just blog about pop culture, pseudo-politics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, ology … the usual and of course media/entertainment which includes music, movies, tv a bit, books, or whatever suits my fancy.

Ummmm as for the music scene right now – it’s lacking in the mainstream. American Top 40 isn’t a good representation of music, the Top 40 should be indicative of the culture. The top 40 is watered down everything, even pop is watered down. Say what you will about Britney, Christina, N Sync, and Backstreet – but they were Pop: down to the core. They were catchy and they got into your head. They were like Saccharin; they were too sweet, and it was so synthetic, but they were devoured by the masses. You could not deny the sheer “Pop” of it.

Continue reading →

BlinkkBeats: Britney Spears – “Work BxxCH”

SnapTrakks, Soundtrek, TrapperKeeper

Everything was worth it. Everything is worth it. Everything will be exponentially more worth it in increasing measure as the cycles continue – if, you, work bxxch #BRITNEYTAUGHTUSALL

#nowgettowork

BlinkkIt:

Please believe this could be a dissertation #ohwait #hadbeendonethat #twice #becauseitsjustthatnice

Brass tacks: It’s fun. Remixable. Killer hooks. Understandable fodder. Strong focus on the beat, pulse, and bombast – Britney claims her role as integrated pneuma, as opposed to overt lyrical / verbal navigator.

I make the governor / Call me the governor

… supports said dissertation #busherayouthsubculturecelebrityicon, and thesis #welcometopostpopmusicentertainmentculture quite nicely. I approve and appreciate.

SIDENOTE: ( I’m not a youth subculture celebrity icon of an era ushered in by an incumbent governor president-elect – but if I were, I would probably hook it with: “I make the governor call me the governor” – I approve, I appreciate, I acknowledge that if ifs and ands were pots and pans there’d be no #WORK for tinkers’ hands… #luckyguesses #Y2Kforeveryall)

SnappIt:

If, you, want, that life – the glass house, the fame balls, the applause, the roar, the 20/20 experience, the carte blanche to go rogue, the holy grail, the crucifixion, the revolutionary rebirth, the ability to make them go berzerk in a breath,  that ticket to kiss land – you, betta, werk.

Continue reading →

VMA Day 2013 – Four Butterflies to Watch #heylookamonarch

Pop Culture, Soundtrek, TrapperKeeper

Honeymoon isn’t even the furthest stretch of one’s falsified imagination when it comes to the Video Music Awards since 2010 #generous This year, I …. okay, I don’t actually know half of the nominees, and I might not have heard of 75% of the songs, but I can pick up a pattern from a mile away #universallaw #fortherecord

No one can predict the future, but we can recognize the present – and that’s good enough for me. Four butterflies to keep an eye on when watching the monarchy tonight… #theeverythingelse

1.) “[T]he renaissance of Pop Art and a Warholian world of blurred lines between reality and fantasy”

Sedgwick Germanotta

[T]angent. Point is: Edie said of herself something that resonates so deeply with GaGa tonight, “if you just listened to what I had to say it was sane, but if you just looked at me you wouldn’t bother to listen. And none of them did. God it was a nightmare.” There isn’t that futility with GaGa, but the nightmare is quite apparent. Performance artists live their art — completely. The world is their canvas — truly. Where the art succeeds, the artist suffers, but it is for the sake of art — even if only for art’s sake.

2013:

2.) Jimmy Timberlake 

Continue reading →

SnappScenes: “Applause” – Lady Gaga

Anthropopogy // Culture, Deconstruction, Soundtrek, TK:LA, TrapperKeeper, Vinyl Mind Flow

I live for the applause, applause, applause – I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause #paws

Screen Shot 2013-08-22 at 7.36.10 PM

What I loved about Alejandro…

This is the drop after the first waves and floods: I’m not here to talk about her facial features, or how to convert atheists into believers; I’m just saying that somewhere in the midst of a[n] indie short film, and a scene-by-scene homage to immaculate conceptions – and collections – lies a near perfect Pop music video period. Is pastiche supposed to be coherent? It is now – let’s delve.

What was lambasted in Born This Way

I don’t know where to begin or end with this one… and I suppose that’s the best way to be – as there is no beginning or end to the perpetual renaissance … What artists do wrong is they lie, what critics do wrong is they try; I’m not going to try and pretend I know every conceptual reference here, nor analyze from a detached place of fault-and-fact finding – this isn’t about Pop cheat sheets and checklists… I’m just going to riff on what I know for me, and what I see

What lingered along the fringes of Scheiße…

Lady Gaga broke her notoriously extended hiatus, premiering her first mastered piece of “new music” … Those two years of antagonizing anticipation culminated into the club-pulsing climax … Forget the fact that this may or may not be what you wanted to hear from someone about whom you may or may not give a scheiße – ether that; from start to finish, career and current track, no one – no one female Pop body – can produce: produce, what Gaga can. Line after line, time after time: perfection – the wait is always worth it.

There’s the flawlessly deft production we’ve come to expect from the Haus mother … stratospheric synth, deep bass, smooth distortion, uncannily human reverb pulsing the cacophony. Gaga lends her voice as an added layer, as much a part of the score as the bevy of inanimate instruments behind her

Eye Lights

Lady Gaga has solidified her sonic aesthetic and social impact – and they are one in the same. If the backbeat pulses harder than my own heartbeat, why not dance together? This is cold technology and hot harmonies, sheer energy, factory fashion, raw humanity, grime, graffiti, and glitterbombs; this is stream-of-consciousness that doesn’t make sense now, but will before the rest of the globe makes sense of itself: this is 31st Century schizo world – welcome Haume.

Four

Is what lays the foundation for “Applause:” The pulse as nothing more, and never anything less, than the traverse between polarity

– once you know the system’s rhythm, all that’s left to do is choreograph the rendevous #multiversallyspeaking

#snappit

The pulse, DJ White Shadow delivers Detroit – and so goes the nation. As far as I’m concerned, they laced the instrumentation with something not-entirely-approved by the FDA. Whether it’s the sonic robot-slap-to-the-face first spin, the morning-after pulled muscles result of a dolo dance party, or the realization that the method is in the systematic mania of said robot slap track – there is something unnatural about this rhythm: unnaturally human. It hollows and speaks at you in sophomoric platitudes, then it eases off while your guard remains staid, eventually you feel the tone thaw as the beat rises… it’s like Motown overtaking the machine, SoundScan beneath the Supremes… when you sing along, you’re fed the applause (whether or not you clap – the roar is the backing track): live to create, die to protect.

#vinylcutprose

Continue reading →

Sounds of the Mayan 2012: Five Albums That Existed This Year – MDNA

Pop Culture, Soundtrek, TrapperKeeper

So… if nothing else, 2012 proved that by George the Mayans had it all kinds of right: this year proved a renaissance of apocalyptic proportions – a year when the culturally amnesiatic cynics failed to recognize a sea change over the screams of their own skeptic scoffs… alas, even in the midst of privately-backed Super-PAC pocketed media, bindered women, NRA publicity stunts, mass school shootings, a deluge of false formations and knowledge starvation, the spectacle’s continued triumph over literacy shrugged – and oh, Sandy; even in the midst of all that, there was music – glorious music – because after all, to mark the fall, the birth of tragedy is forever  conceived in the spirit of music.

Somewhere along the 365 steps on the road to perdition, albums debuted, someone named Franked caused an Ocean of tears, a boy named Ken lamented the m.a.a.d. urban terrain, and Fiona spun the wheel while time idly passed by… but this isn’t about them – although everything else prior has unremarkably revolved around the former two – this list is about five albums I listened to, five albums I didn’t need people to tell me I liked, five works that are tragic in their own right, five that may not be cool, may be too young for school, but five that at the end of the day reminded me of what “those” Mayans might play had they lived to see this day…

MDNA – Madonna

MDNfAce

This was easily some of Madonna’s best work to date – contextually – period. Although sonic cohesion and precision ebb and flow within the confines of Madge’s contemporary discography, MDNA solidified a mood and melody for the Monarch’s tumultuous mindset. Ciccone grabbed the circuit and spun it up proper, regardless of all analog static enveloping the release. Best friends, boyfriends, and rhythmic revelations in tow – Madge dropped a bomb, aurally addicting, introspectively intriguing, albeit misguided at times, but always spectacular – MDNA what a mighty majestic show.

Continue reading →

Keep Calm and Kari On … with Chester French

Pop Culture, re:brand – America, TK:LDN

Skin… is a many layered thing; it is artistic, it is cultural, it is biological, it rests on the fragile fringe of one’s inner and outer space… not to be melodramatic, but we consider it an overlooked focus – an abstract opus – of cultural connective tissue.

So, for Art Nouveau’s Skin issue, we chose a duo who connected all of those elements in a most masterful manner: Chester French – black tears, faced fears, a pair so open-minded about the lovable future that their well-endowed brains have descended upon every listener’s ears. We had a chat with Max and D.A. to get an inside look at how they view those elements that make the epidermis so oddly endearing.

zzcfphoto1

When we come into this world, our skin is supple and soft, that unhindered remnant of divine design. For artists like Chester French, the first album is of that same fresh design. The label signs you because of that new-new you bring to this world. Musicians wear that skin like a manifestation of the self. Unlike the child though, an artist can craft their own primary skin; now more than ever though, it is getting harder to make that sonic aesthetic a signature different than all others.

KE: How important is it to build your own sonic aesthetic through your music, and what do you think your skin is in the industry?

CF: I think – to answer the first part of the question – I think for us it’s kind of important to try and carve out what is our territory creatively in terms of what we want to make and how we want it to sound. I think there’s so much music and so many people in music feel like they have to constantly be following, either super-new trends or really established ideas about how music should sound at a given moment. For us it’s way more important to find a sound that’s unique to us, than it is to “fit in” to any group, necessarily…

KE: Basically, my thing is this: skin is functional and fashionable. It is the first line of defense, but musically it is that very foundation of artistic identity which requires the greatest defense of all.

It’s one thing to look good, a freshman feat that Love the Future achieved, but it’s another entirely to make that good look last: enter Music 4 TNGRS.

KE: What is a TNGR, and what is this music you’re making for them from this standpoint?

Continue reading →

TrapperKeeper: MDNA – Madonna

Pop Culture, Soundtrek, TrapperKeeper

MDNA… the last time I wrote those letters in said sequence was, well, four years ago when I was at AU studying Advanced Bio; proper Madonna album debut… the last time I sat down to indulge in one of those was, well, four years ago when I was in life living Advanced Pop. Those were different days, simpler days. Days where Hard Candy was a passable stab at soundtracking Pop’s sticky-and-sweet soul, until a few years later when we’re in the midst of the reality that it was more a passable set of fillings in the cavity-laden mouth of Mod Pop. M-D-N-A… the last time I chanted those letters in said sequence was but a few moments ago when Pure Pop emerged from the cultural tar pits of Detroit born-and-bred, Euro wed-and-bedded electronic sublime filth that is “I’m Addicted” – that is the cosmic bass stealth anthem from the primary piece of modern Pop’s genome: M.D.N.A.

Continue reading →