July 16, 2004
NEW FRONTIERS IN PROMOTIONALIZING
I just received the new album from The Mae Shi, Terrorbird. I have not heard it, and I know next to nothing about the band. That's not the point. Or it's just the edge of the point. Included in the package is a CD labelled 2004 Mae Shi Mixtape. The "mix" is a concatenation of short, short snippets from many, many songs: "Another One Bites The Dust," "Cavern," "Follow The Leader," a Minutemen song, "Boogie On Reggae Woman," etc. No beatmatching or apparent theme. I am experiencing several effects:
1) When music is folded back on itself in quick, frictive turns, a big erotic mirror starts flashing and the whole field of sound appears behind you like a pond where everything is connected physically and touching one bit of algae gives you a tingly tingle that implies another tingly tingler miles away. The muchness rockets geometrically into extra muchness, leading you to believe that this is how music is to be heard, always: in a big sticky, ecstatic cloud.
2) Whoever assembled this CD has taste that parallels mine very closely. I dislike very few of these snippets. All of a sudden, I want to rush home and get my Elliott Smith and Warren G CDs.
3) I will now listen to an album that I was almost certainly not going to listen to. I have been duped, in some way, since all this mix CD has done is to announce "Look at all this great music we like!" Once listened to, it's pretty much useless; the jumpcut steez is annoying, built for neither backgrounds nor parties. But it worked.
Posted by Sasha at July 16, 2004 02:43 PM | TrackBack