The Null Device
2004/3/26
Seen on the sticker on Electrelane's The Power Out:
A record that will appeal
to art rockers,
pure popists, indie kids
& Riot Grrls alike.
"Pure popists"? Isn't that some sort of schismatic Catholic sect or something?
(The album itself is fairly good, on first listen. Not as post-punk and angular as I thought it might be (going by the sticker, I imagined it'd be somewhere between Interpol and Sleater-Kinney or something), but somewhat gentler and a shade more ethereal. I rather like Love Builds Up and Only One Thing Is Needed.
The Automatic Mix Tape Generator is a service which makes mix tapes to order; you send in a style, emotion, mood, event or other constraint, and the robot (or, actually, a contributor) sends you back a track listing. It's sort of like the USENET Oracle for record geeks. And the site contains recently made mixtapes, with briefs like "Songs That I Would Listen To If I Were A Scientist In An Underwater Laboratory Somewhere Off The Coast Of Antarctica" (which, as you'd expect, contains Radiohead, Sigur Rós and GY!BE), "Music For Someone Who Wishes They Could See All The Stars At Night From The Middle Of The City", as well as universals like "Songs To Get Over Me To", "Songs For Someone Blocked By A Friend On IM For No Reason" and "Less Indie Rock, Dammit". (via FmH)
The Coolsie Paradox: daggy 80s top-40 (like, say, Prince or Cyndi Lauper or whoever did Eye Of The Tiger) is cooler than things like The Cure or The Smiths or the Jesus & Mary Chain; that's because everybody knows that the Smiths were cool, and so being "into" them carries little coolness points; whereas, the more daggy/trashy something is, the bigger cojones (or more highly developed sense of hipster irony) you're showing when you admit being into it.
Many years ago, I first discovered The Cure via a borrowed cassette copy of Standing On A Beach: The Singles. On its B-side, after A Night Like This, it was padded out with Phil Collins songs; a shocking faux pas.
I wonder how long until Phil Collins is officially cooler than The Cure.