while I'm at it
Talking about my visit to Aquarius reminded me that I’ve already had one shopping trip so far this year. There’s only one store in San Francisco / North America that can really compete for my affections with Aquarius, and that would be Amoeba. I don’t really see them as competing; Aquarius is run by my friends and is a boutique with a high density of specialty items and Amoeba has a huge variety and much better coverage of electronic dance music (such as it is these days). Neither of them has any trouble separating me from large piles of my money.
Anyway, here’s what I picked up at Amoeba last week:
- Akimbo: Harshing Your Mellow (Alternative Tentacles)
- Akimbo: Navigating the Bronze (Alternative Tentacles)
- Cabaret Voltaire: Eight Crepuscule Tracks (Giant)
- Cabaret Voltaire: The Living Legends (Restless / Mute)
- Darkthrone: FOAD (Peaceville)
- Nick Drake: Bryter Later (Island)
- Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left (Island)
- Nick Drake: Time of No Return (Hannibal)
- Echospace: The Coldest Season (Modern Love / Baked Goods)
- Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief (Island)
- Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking (Island)
- Fotheringay: Fotheringay (Fledg’ling)
- Gravenhurst: The Western Lands (Warp)
- PJ Harvey: White Chalk (Island)
- Daniel “belteShazzar” Higgs: Metempsychotic Melodies (Holy Mountain)
- LCD Soundsystem: 45:33 (DFA)
- Gram Parsons with The Flying Burrito Brothers: Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (Amoeba)
- Pylon: Gyrate PLUS (DFA)
- Seefeel: CH-Vox (RePHLeX)
- Six Organs of Admittance: Shelter from the Ash (Drag City)
- Wiley: Eskiboy – The Best of Tunnel Vision (selected by Logan Sama) (Eskibeat)
- Wire: Read & Burn 03 (Pink Flag)
- v/a: Fabric 36 (mixed by Ricardo Villalobos) (Fabric)
I’d say it’d been a while since I’d been shopping, but this happens pretty much every time I go to Amoeba.
not so wily
The Best of Tunnel Vision is basically Wiley spitting a whole lot of confrontational, charmless battle rhymes. Given that even Wiley thinks that MCing isn't his strong suit, I have to wonder who thought putting out a 46-track double CD compilation of London E3 road chat, freestyles and remixes was a good idea. I've made it through the whole thing twice and it's been a long haul each time. Mixtapes (grime, hip-hop, techno, what-have-you) work best if they are grounded in an immediate context (a radio show, a lazy afternoon at the studio with a bunch of MCs, some kind of conceptual hook). JME can crank out new mixtapes for Boy Better Know forever, as far as I'm concerned, and they'll all be engaging and fresh – even when he cranks out 45 minutes of halfassed funky house, at least it's all his and it isn't hard on the ears. But the condensed, dismembered, "best-of" approach on display here isn't working. Mostly it makes me want to listen to the backing tracks (including Various Production's excellent "Hater" and a whole buttload of Wiley's own, classic productions) on their own.