by Jean Marie Carey | 6 Apr 2013 | Music, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
Some intermittent institutions … I’m probably not going to see them again. I always wonder what “the last time” doing something or going somewhere will be like, if it’s better if you know beforehand or preferable to find out the continuum is now a memory afterward.
I have been going to the Castle, Tampa’s gothic and industrial music nightclub, in its various iterations, since I was a teenager. No matter how long I would move away for, it would always be here when I returned. Over the years, I was able to compare it experientially with all sorts of clubs, from Sanctuary in Salt Lake City to Warsaw in Miami to Berghain in Berlin and scads of “rave-themed” house parties in Antwerp and Brussels.
This past year I haven’t gone out as much in general, but I still met up with longtime friends on Mondays once in a while. We wouldn’t set up a date or anything, you’d just show up and some of the crew would be there. Attendance has been down on Mondays and while Ybor-City-in-the-Nineties legacies like the Senator and Theo Wujcik still make the scene regularly, eventually, the world will move on. It’s sad in a way to think of this last vestige of the once incredible Tampa Bay electronic music scene, which at one time including rotating DJ nights at Rene’s, Empire, Trax, Palladium, Club Detroit, Masquerade, and pop-ups at Act IV and other places (not counting London Victory Club, which began it all) falling into history but … I was really happy that the Castle has made so many attempts to keep up to date with electro and added lots of cool newish elements to its rotations, particularly in the music video department, mixing in Ladytron, Interpol, Cut Copy and Presets to the “hits.”
The last night I went to the Castle, I was braced to be a little disappointed, since I’m one of the people who actually prefers the new material to, you know, the entire Hacienda playlist from 1987. But actually it was just perfect. My friends were there, it wasn’t too crowded with glowstickers, and there was a lot of room to dance, yet it wasn’t empty. I don’t know if I will see the Castle again but this was a good way to remember it if I don’t.
by Jean Marie Carey | 3 Sep 2011 | Animals in Art, Art History, Music
If Cut Copy had 24 albums I would probably listen to Cut Copy all day and all night all the time…as it is hardly a cycle goes by that I don’t hear all or parts of Bright Neon Like Love (2004), In Ghost Colours (2008) or Zonoscope (2011).
Though Melbourne-based Cut Copy is most often washed with the ‘referencing the ’80s’ brush I think it is more apt to say the ‘reference’ is less by way of the [film versions] of Less Than Zero than The Informers — a time and place that never existed removed by memory. And while Cut Copy’s hooks and basslines are superficially poppy, the intentionally stuttering four and eight count measures are demanding of engaged listening.
Zonoscope in particular seems symphonic in the way it is presented as an arc, even without some of the ambient noise segues so prevalent on In Ghost Colours. If IGC was lyrically about the limitations of primary relationships to conquer doubt and isolation, Zonoscope is immersed diametrically in stealthy hope and crushing disappointment that is more internally oriented/externally directed.
Although these three albums are very distinct — mostly owing to the decreasing emphasis on guitars to propel melodies — Cut Copy’s mainstay continues to be danceable, or at least move-able, complicated synth pop of incredible harmonics and density. Dan Whitford is able to pack an epic amount of yearning and escalation into both arrangements and vocals; the devastating release of Hanging on to Every Heartbeat begins at the 2:00 mark of the 4:30 song. The descant, and the change in meaning of the chorus, almost makes me sick it’s so upsetting, and that’s a pretty good shake-up from what begins so cheerfully.
Zonoscope re-presents Cut Copy in a sort of Symbolist ethic, with an interest in the macabre and in hermetic, already-nostalgic technology. Here is a link to listen to Hanging onto Every Heartbeat. Also Cut Copy will play out at the Firestone in Orlando on October 1!
Though Keane is mostly known in the U.S. for the single “Bend and Break” from 2004’s Hopes and Fears, the 2006 more electronics-driven follow-up, Under the Iron Sea, is also a pretty good album. I had only heard UtIS on iTunes and dataheaven.us and so had not until recently (when I saw it in the library) become aware of the fantastic cover design(s) by Sanna Annukka.
