| #636 |
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2002 |
Perilous 2002 Wrap Up So, last column I was steadfastly refusing to do a top ten but then the editor tells me to do a wrap up column . . . and how do you wrap up something that has already been wrapped, ribbon-tied and presented? Well, there were a few notable releases that do deserve a mention. First, in the cut up vein, Cassette Boy’s infamous 98 track release The Parker Tapes on Barry’s Bootlegs/Spymania takes the award for Best (ab)Use of Jamie Oliver and was a remarkably inspired and coherent set up media parodies and pop cut ups that, if you listen to lawyers, should never have been released. Fortunately it was. Proving that cleverness is not the sole preserve of nerdy Poms with too much time on their hands, Mark N released a stunning cut up of the commentary of the 2001 rugby league grand final between “the Newcastle Eels and the Parramatta Knights” under the pseudonym Question Mark on the No Frills collection (from the photocopy zine of the same name). Mark’s sly cutting of the commentary draws out the latent homo-eroticism out of the testosterone-fuelled game of grunt turning the coverage into a full blown play of cocks, balls, and arses complete with subversive chopping of the mobile phone and cosmetic halftime advertisements. On a less subversive local tip, Dsico’s ever-increasing series of pop mashups and distortions continued to grow culminating with fine deconstructions of Nelly’s Hot In Here and Justin Timblerlake’s Like I Love You. Dsico has a 12” vinyl release out early in 2003 on Perth’s Hardline label. In glitch territory the year was pretty much one of treading water. Merck released several records from Machine Drum and Krisuit Salu which took Prefuse73’s glitched-up hip hop edits and drew them back into the IDM world from which Prefuse73 had previously liberated them. Not that they were bad releases, just derivative and lacking in flavour and a little funk. Prefuse himself managed the sublime Rolls & Waves EP for Hefty along with a stack of remixes but we all await his new album in 2003, because on the hip hop front it was Anti-Pop Consortium’s Arrhythmia that moved things forward in glitch hop more than anything else. Mille Plateaux and ~scape and other labels released interesting but not groundbreaking records, the best being the Farben retrospective and Jan Jelinek’s collaborative work with the Japanese-based Computer Soup; Andrew Pekler’s dazed aural sunshowers; and a very lovely late entry from a set of remixes of Toytronic artist Multiplex for the little known Senton label. Other than that, Qua’s debut album for Adelaide’s Surgery Records, Ollo’s Sleeper, Pretty Boy Crossover’s Any Number Can Play, and The New Pollutants’ Hygene Atoms were among the best of the local releases pushing things slightly left-of-centre. Whilst on a hip hop tip, Koolism and a strong debut from Hermitude kept things rolling along and establishing Sydney (and Canberra) as a place for quite distinct from the rough and tumble rhymes of Melbourne. But overall, this year has been tough for music, especially inspiring and boundary pushing music. In the clubs, crowds are down and as ticket prices for the big events continue to rise, many of the smaller underground events are facing the problem of crowds who have had their wallets pillaged by the festivals. Despite the lure of big name internationals and the like, shows like Kraftwerk at $85 and DJ Shadow at $50 mean that those who go don’t have much money left for the rest of the month to support the local scene. Happy new year. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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