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Walls is one of those albums showing that two decades in, electronic music still has legs. There's really good stuff coming from Germany these days. I haven't been in Berlin since about 18 months after the fall of the wall (crap, I can't remember for sure whether I went there in the summer of '90 or '91). By then civilians drove through from West to East unimpeded, but since my father was in the military we had to check in through checkpoint Alpha at the start of the Autobahn. It was the weirdest thing to lose 20 minutes to what was obviously an obsolete remnant of the cold war, what with the thousands of cars driving by freely and Charlie gone. Already different from the experience related by another "military brat" in 1988. In the fall of 1989 I remember feeling elated for Eastern Europe but thinking it would take a generation for Germany to reunite. It was only mildly comforting for my self esteem to be proven so wrong in company of people such as Mitterrand, the French president at the time.
East Berlin at the time was still a ghost town in some places, with drab buildings showing ugly WWII scars, grey figures looking at us through heavy curtains, Trabant testaments to Communist ineptitude. Cranes were starting to rise though and I'm sure it's a very different city now. Berlin is a sprawling city ten times the size of Paris for just 50% more people, which makes it hard to wrap your head around, sort of Europe's LA, giving you the cold shoulder and not caring one bit about you.
Remembering this trip makes me think of my late uncle André. It's going to be two years on March 21st. I've had a blog post in the making about his death since it happened but never got around to it. I have to come to terms with his loss and write that post.
The key with digital music gear porn is to only wank to it and resist buying stuff you're likely to play with for 30 minutes then forget in a closet. Still, here's some fun stuff:
My fingers drool (controllerism anyone?) but the head and wallet say no. I may buy a Behringer BCF2000 though later this year though, it's a hell of a control surface for $200. We'll see how Tascam reponds to it. (Maybe they did ? I haven't followed the latest NAMM news yet.)
Only remotely related but I saw this while reading through a bunch of digital music blogs today: The eSession Experience: Online Recording for All.
Update: the devices I listed above betray my drummer bias, but there's a bunch of DJ controllers coming to market too. I bought an XP10 a couple years ago but found that you really need to know your tracks before you dare mix them (duh), from their BPM to their mood to their key.
Pitchfork's review of Burial's Untrue is mostly on point, though it's funny to see a music reviewer struggle (or at least only intuit around) with well-known concepts such what a half-time beat is. If you play half-time on the drums, then by definition your accented snare or rimshot will fall on the third beat. That, and the fact Reggae is one of the rhythmic foundations of UK garage make the writer's puzzlement at this album's rhythmic structures feel a bit noobish. Feels like someone reviewing a blues album without knowing what a shuffle is. Because I'm such a nice guy, here's a homework assignment for Philip Sherburne: Gavin Harrison's Rhythmic Illusions.
It's fun to see how often this record ended up in the "best of" 2007 lists. Not that it's a bad album, but 2-step with IDM fishbowl production values (thank god, because garage can be so cheesy) is basically music from ten years ago. It reminds me of this guy I once heard define funk as a genre from the eighties led by Prince...
Anyway, I didn't mean to pick on Pitchfork, and I'm sure I'm sounding pedantic. My point is, if you're paid to write about music, it helps to know the basics, not just name-drop sub sub-genres of little consequence, all things considered ("speed garage" anyone?).