Nate Haduch

Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome of Another Period join Scott to talk about the third season of one of the best non-sports shows on television. Then, adventurer Kiwi Kris stops by to tell us about his adventures which includes falling into a hole and discovering a new part of Machu Picchu. Later, musician Josh Fox stops by to talk about working on a new album with his band Septic Imperfection and to do some acapella versions of his songs.

This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma, Audible (www.audible.com/BANGBANG), Black Tux (www.blacktux.com/BANGBANG), Leesa (www.leesa.com/BANGBANG), and Baskets on FX.

Claire Dederer’s recent essay for The Paris Review, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?, starts off with a discussion of the ethical and moral issues around appreciating the art of men who are monsters (e.g. Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, or Picasso):

They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them.

Interesting enough, right? I don’t want to spoil it too much, but the essay takes a sharp turn about halfway through, leading to a fascinating examination of the necessary selfishness of artists.

There are many qualities one must possess to be a working writer or artist. Talent, brains, tenacity. Wealthy parents are good. You should definitely try to have those. But first among equals, when it comes to necessary ingredients, is selfishness. A book is made out of small selfishnesses. The selfishness of shutting the door against your family. The selfishness of ignoring the pram in the hall. The selfishness of forgetting the real world to create a new one.

Really worth reading the whole thing…I’ve been thinking about it constantly since I read it the other day.

Pop music songs have become increasingly repetitive in recent years — think Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, Beyonce’s 7/11 or Formation, and just about anything by Rihanna — and there’s a good reason for this: we like repetition. When people repeat words, it stops sounding like speaking and starts sounding like singing. Lyrical repetition makes songs sound more musical.

For a NY Times piece on cancelled weddings, Jessica Hische created these anti-invitations in the style of fancy wedding invites.

My thoughts immediately went to fancy wedding stationery, and I had a lot of fun both writing and designing these fake anti-invitations. I tried to poke fun at some of the current trends in wedding stationery design, which meant I got to have fun playing with watercolors!

“It’s gonna have to be good enough, I can’t do this anymore, my brain won’t work.” So James Murphy confesses on recent single “Tonite”. Hardly an encouraging admission given LCD Soundsystem‘s American Dream is probably the most anticipated comeback record of the year. But then Murphy has always tried to pre-empt and derail expectation and criticism, as his outfit’s premature split itself suggests.
…LCD Soundsystem have always been great performers, so it stood to reason that their live prowess, coupled with an appetite born out of a near-five-year abstinence, would hit the spot. New material, on the other hand, is a different matter. Popular music history is littered with disappointment when it comes to the ‘comeback…

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…record’. Ergo, fans will no doubt approach American Dream with a degree of trepidation.

Happily, for the most part, any lingering doubt is unfounded even if, on first listen, American Dream sounds so familiar it’s a little disconcerting. Sure, there’s an expectation that the band sound like themselves, but initially, the synths, beats and Murphy’s vocal style feel a little too habitual. Other Voices reworks Us V Them, and Tonite can err too close to LCD-by-numbers for example. But then should we really expect to be dazzled by one of recent years’ most adept magpies? While LCD Soundsystem’s music has always cribbed from and re-imagined numerous touchstones and genres, had the hunter-gatherer in James Murphy finally exhausted his territory?

It turns out not. This record, more than any from their back catalogue, is a slow burn. It doesn’t have the spiky malevolence of North American Scum or the punchy pull of Daft Punk Is Playing at My House, but it does have depth to spare. Sonically, it’s the richest record they have produced. The nine-minute plus How Do You Sleep’s opening tribal beat and subtle digital tinkling leave Murphy’s cries of “I can’t hear you anymore” sounding like they are echoing out into the abyss. It’s a spooky and troubling opening, which builds gradually and magnificently to a crescendo capped with the repeated line “And six steps back.” Other Voices includes a lovely bass line that recalls Tina Weymouth on baggier form; Emotional Haircut dabbles in a cacophony of rhythmical layers, and Change Yr Mind apes David Bowie’s Fame guitar licks to great effect (his presence pervades the record more than any other LCD Soundsystem recording, which is saying something).

Lyrically, Murphy imprints himself seemingly without outside influence. American Dream is certainly the saddest record LCD Soundsystem has produced. These are songs battered by self-doubt, a preoccupation with getting older (a theme that has run through much of his work) and aching laments for his failure to connect. Time and time again he berates himself: “You know that you’re the only one who’s been destroying all the fun,” painting a picture of a party pooper extraordinaire. The themes of the record aren’t restricted to his own preconceived shortfalls, as more than ever his view is outward looking. Call The Police reflects political confusion: “Well, there’s a full-blown rebellion but you’re easy to confuse/By triggered kids and fakers and some questionable views/Oh, call the cops, call the preachers!” And Other Voices touches on division: “Your still a pushover for passionate people/and you’re just a baby now/with those soft hands and no eyes/resisting other voices.”

There are thematic crossovers between this record and Arcade Fire’s recent Everything Now, such as “Everybody’s singing the same song,” versus “Every song that I’ve ever heard/Is playing at the same time/It’s absurd.” But unlike Arcade Fire’s inglorious and patronising efforts (“Love is hard/Sex is easy” or “Be my Wendy, I’ll be your Peter Pan” to quote just a couple of that record’s lyrical horrors), Murphy is far more pragmatic and unsentimental, whether he’s debunking Hallmark sentiments – “Yeah, we don’t waste time with love/It’s just a push and a shove” – or demanding “So get up and stop your complaining”, he’s is pretty adept at calling bullshit when he sees it.

It’s difficult to believe Arcade Fire’s sentiments on Everything Now, feeling as clunky and forced as they do, but in spite of Murphy’s recent claims that he broke up his band to sell tickets, it’s his record that is the more convincing of the two. Despite his best efforts to sabotage a sense of authenticity, the messages on the record remain credible.

American Dream is flawed, human, and will only commit to one certainty: “You’re getting older/I promise you this; you’re getting older.” Yet it isn’t a depressing record. Like any other LCD Soundsystem album it will doubtless encourage folk onto their feet, and whilst Murphy may rue a perceived failure to connect, this is where he will unite others.

Equally, although these songs wreak of dissatisfaction in places, he’s no cynic, and while overall it’s a less immediate work than their previous efforts, the added complexity will no doubt ensure its longevity. The most instant song on the record is the lead single Call The Police, and while it might be an unabashed play for glory, he can be forgiven the pitch. After all, this time his fans still wanted a hit, and he deserved one. Murphy’s fallibility has proved to be his strength.

01. Oh Baby (05:49)
02. Other Voices (06:43)
03. I Used To (05:32)
04. Change Yr Mind (04:57)
05. How Do You Sleep? (09:12)
06. Tonite (05:47)
07. Call the Police (06:58)
08. American Dream (06:06)
09. Emotional Haircut (05:29)
10. Black Screen (12:05)
11. Pulse Version One (bonus track) (13:42)

Dan Hon recently trained a neural net to generate a list of fictional British placenames. The process is fairly simple…you train a program on a real list of placenames and it “brainstorms” new names based on patterns it found in the training list. As Hon says, “the results were predictable”…and often hilarious. Here are some of my favorites from his list:

Heaton on Westom
Brumlington
Stoke of Inch
Batchington Crunnerton
Salt, Earth
Wallow Manworth
Crisklethe’s Chorn
Ponkham Bark
Buchlingtomptop
Broad Romble
Fuckley

See also auto-generated maps of fantasy worlds.

Update: Tom Taylor did a similar thing last year using Tensorflow. Here are a few of his fictional names:

Allers Bottom
Hendrelds Hill
St Ninhope
Up Maling
Firley Dinch

There’s also an associated Twitter bot. (via @philgyford)

Also, Dan Connolly had a look at the etymology of the names on Hon’s list.

Buncestergans. At first glance this doesn’t look a lot like a place name but let’s break it down. We’ve got Bun which is definitely from Ireland (see Bunratty, Bunclody, Bundoran) meaning bottom of the river, and I believe we’re talking bottom as in the mouth rather than the riverbed (or there are whole lot of magical lady-of-the-lake towns in Ireland, I’m happy believing either). Cester is our Roman fort, then we have -gans.

I don’t think gans has any meaning in British place names. My guess is the net got this from Irish surnames like Fagans, Hagans, Duggans, that sort of thing. My Gaelic’s not so great (my mother, grandmother, and several aunts and uncles would all be better suited to this question!) but I think the -gan ending in Gaelic is a diminuitive, so Buncestergans could be the Small Fort at the Bottom of the River. I quite like that. It’s a weird Gaelic-Latin hybrid but why the hell not!

On GT Ultra, Guerilla Toss continue to play at the mystical meeting point of DIY punk-jazz skronk, jamband festival populism, and the clanging dance music befitting their spot on the DFA label.
In practice, it’s a collision that sometimes suggests a neon-splattered version of the rolling grooves surfed by Talking Heads and Brian Eno on Remain in Light. If GT Ultra doesn’t quite have a “Once in a Lifetime” moment, it does have the band’s most nuanced work yet. Capturing the group’s assault with a depth unheard on their previous releases, GT Ultra condenses their garish colors and considerable charms.
Perhaps the opposite of timeless, GT Ultra is so completely in the technological and aesthetic present it’s hard to fathom what this music…

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…might sound like in a decade, riding proud for the only time is now/no future hippie-punk ethos. And with an album cover depicting a sheet of LSD blotter and a title referencing the CIA’s MKULTRA program, in which unwitting subjects were dosed with acid, psychedelia and psychedelics are central throughout. Rooting in the Boston experimental scene before relocating to Brooklyn, Guerilla Toss practice musical psychonautics of a most forceful variety, the aural equivalent of flooding the eyes with strobe lights. Live, they’ve been a trigger for enveloping set-long mosh pits, and GT Ultra acts as a carrier for almost unceasing voltage.

Fading in on a synth wash, they get right to the frenzy with the opening “Betty Dreams of Green Men,” in which insistent congas carry a massive groove meant for far larger spaces than the DIY venues the band usually play. Held together by Kassie Carlson’s spoken/sung/shouted surrealisms and drummer Peter Negroponte’s drive, the propulsive music obscures the far-out textures hovering lower in the mix. On “Skull Pop,” a throat-singing hum sets up stereo-spun drum fills, while layers of crossing synths seem ready to burst into the foreground, leaving the rhythm (and body) behind. The band’s methodical escalations also serve them in surprising ways, on “Crystal Run” twice climbing ladders to ecstasy as Carlson finds her most ineffable melody yet on a short, arresting bridge.

If Guerilla Toss’ particular combination of sounds suggests a clear formula in places, GT Ultra also demonstrates enough resourcefulness that the band might already have some alternate pathways in sight. On the LP, both sides end with slight outliers, places where the moshing might slow when played live. “The String Game” pulls another page from Remain in Light, beginning with a haunted recitation similar to “The Overload” before establishing (for Guerilla Toss) a slow-motion churn. But the album’s closer, “Dose Rate,” offers perhaps the most alluring coordinates for where Guerilla Toss might point themselves. As lyrics shout out Orange Sunshine LSD and a big summer chorus mentions “Lucy level,” “Dose Rate” glides like an introspective crowd-surfer at sunset.

GT Ultra is anything but monochromatic, but its energy also feels occasionally constrained by its own parameters, with Carlson’s lyrics and the band’s arrangements pogoing at the edge of total freedom, and perhaps total chaos. “Dose Rate” visualizes something else, a dream inside a dream. And if most of the album is perhaps best enjoyed when in need of a certain rush, it’s a heady approach that seems ready for festivals of all stripes, equally prepared to both get weird and make a big, big beat.