| #584 |
|
2001 |
Perilous 584 Here’s part two of the annual wrap up. Last week I gave a quick rundown on some of the best local releases so this week its events and international releases. There’s been stacks of good live shows this year but the worst show had to be Roni Size’s interminably boring Reprazent ‘live’ thing at the Metro. That was so crap and MC Dynamite had the dubious honour of being the worst MC of the year at that one show. Of course, the best have to include Anticon’s amazing live jam with members of The Hive, Pivot and Fourplay at the Opera House Studio show; and Jan Jelinek and SJD’s recent double header at Frigid. Most interesting art shows goes to San Francisco’s SFMOMA’s 010101, an amazing collection of digital and multimedia artworks which were diverse, well presented, and ranged from screen-based online works to a crazy sculpture making robot; and a wonderful display of local works at Sydney’s MCA by Ricky Swallow and Erick Swenson – most interesting being Swallow’s turntable dioramas. Sadly the MCA also takes out the most disappointing art show with their grossly underdone Art>Music exhibition which managed to have some of the least interesting music-related work in the one place at the same time I have seen. Into populist stuff now, best chart single has to be Missy Elliott’s Get Yr Freak On which showed that a) Timbaland is still full of interesting ideas, b) an expensive video clip can be exciting, weird and end up with bits of another track tacked on the end (a strange and intriguing development continued in the other Missy clips), and c) pop music can still be invigorating. Missy’s Get Yr Freak On, One Minute Man, and the monkey world of Basement Jaxx’s Where’s Your Head At also go head-to-head for oddest and wildest pop clips. On the other side of music, there were some interesting moves afoot in the independent hip hop world which has been undergoing a resurgence over the last three years. Best releases would be about half of Saul Williams’ daring and flawed Amethyst Rock Star album which shows Williams’ inimitable and fierce rhymes and delivery; Restiform Bodies’ and Radioinactive’s oddball hip hop-meets-sound collage work for Anticon and Mush respectively; and, of course, cLOUDDEAD. Buck65’s Man Overboard album made for perfect solitary hip hop listening – a quiet room and no-one else around; whilst Aesop Rock’s Labour Days presented a radically different New York to that of labelmates Cannibal Ox. But probably out of all the hip hop releases from overseas this year it was Atmosphere’s Lucy Ford EP collection that was one step above everything else. Funniest mixtape goes to Z-Trip And P’s riotous Uneasy Listening which manages to, with a two minute section, cut Newcleus’ electro classic Jam On It into Metallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls overlaid with Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning along with a host of other weird bad 80s pop cut ups. Funkiest mixtape of course is DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist’s sequel to Brainfreeze called Product Placement – another live set cutting together a vast number (around 80) of 7” advertisement records and rare funk cuts in 50 minutes. On a more electronic tip, Maurizio as Rhythm & Sound managed to collaborate with Jamaican great Cornell Campbell to put out the wonderful King In My Empire 12” – a beautiful warm dub excursion. Sydney’s own Sheriff Lindo did the oddest but extremely effective dub track Yout Dem A Suffa for Dub For The Masses 2 another great electronic dub release (which is something I should have mentioned last week). Herbert managed to make yet another beautiful album with Bodily Functions to compliment some great live shows; Fourtet’s b-side track Warmer Places and tracks from Minotaur Shock and some of the Twisted Nerve label ushered in a new era of British electronica crossed with elements folk music – extremely effective and reminiscent at times of the early 90s work of Ultramarine. Prefuse73 brought the first of some fertile hip hop excursions and cut ups for the aging Warp label and the US-based Schematic label dropped some amazing noisy electro-oriented work. Drum & bass got all ravey again which revitalised it for a while, but the real action is somewhere else. And that’s a problem that seems to be growing and growing – its as if we are at the low ebb of a musical tide. There’s lots around but nothing pointing a new direction forward. That about wraps it up . You’ll find various top 10s by myself, Luke Snarl and Sir Robbo up at www.snarl.org shortly if you like lists as much as we do. See you next year. And maybe at Flush. Yellow Peril  Goto
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