When I saw Fuck Buttons live, their set was pretty much a run-through of Street Horrrsing. Or maybe it wasn’t. It’s hard to keep track of such things when you’re preoccupied by such blissful washes of sound. This album gains steam at such a laid-back, comfortable pace that you only realize the force that it [...]
This is technically a 2007 record, but since the duo has spent much of 2008 promoting it, and since I just spent a lovely evening hanging out with Lindsay and Cliff, who are Birdlips, I’m going to give this a write-up. Cliff Usher has a voice that’s like red clay. It’s deep and solid, but [...]
In 1982 Neil Young released Trans, an album that featured vocoder, synthesizers and electronic beats. It was a perplexing step for Young. Was this a joke? A comment on computer technology’s infiltration into pop music? A sincere co-opting of electronic sound to help Young achieve his musical vision? An exercise in how the vocoder helped [...]