The greatest quote from a holiday movie

Kyle Gass (of Tenacious D fame) in the movie Elf (they are pitching different story ideas for a children's book: "what about a tribe of asparagus children, and they're self-conscious about the way their pee smells."

This is what I get....

for going places on youtube I never should have been....

What kind of kisser is MEGAVORE?

You're a Free Love Kisser

Of all the kissing types, you've racked up the most experience Kissing is no big deal to you - you'll kiss anyone you find hot! Cause your a SLUT! You don't respect yourself, so kissing anyone is easy! It's easy for you to take the plunge and make the first move. You're afraid of anyone getting to know you, because you're so sad and hurt inside. And you don't really consider kissing to be cheating! Mainly because you use people as much as you do your sexuality to get attention!

Are You Sad Enough To Take An Online Kissing Test and Post the Results on your Blog/Myspace/Facebook page?

Ditching the democratic debate to watch The Office.

Absolutely.

Exorcism: Is it in you?

Exorcisms can either be really scary, or really ridiculous.  Thanks to youtube, we can witness how much a modern day exorcism seems like a mixture of a bratty kid's temper tantrum and the WWF. (Ironically, how much do you want to bet that these "possessed" people are in fact desperately lonely?) The following video is one of the best examples.  You owe it to yourself to watch at least until minute 4 ... skip ahead if you have to.

If you really think about it, I'm sure deep down in each of us is a stellar exorcism performance just waiting to come out.  Just think of the beautiful moaning and wailing you could conjure - the deep growly voice - the sacrilegious babble - the jerking and screaming.  I'm extremely confident that I could put on one of the most wonderful possessions/exorcisms in history.  I would stage a mock exorcism and film it were I not afraid of being struck down with lightning for sacrilege.   But if for some reason I do in the future ... I want this guy to do it:

Update: Pitchfork reviews Burial's Untrue

Oozes with self-importance.  Isn't it amazing how well Pitchfork reviews squeezes all of the fun out of music.  Their like, here's why this is like this ... what, you didn't know that, you should read our reviews before you like anything.

The Burial review is well enough, its just the reviewer actually used the phrase "and in doing so smears them into unique shapes."  Thats almost as bad as this line we read from a flyer put out by an SLC-based activist org called Visual Cacophony: " Visual Cacophony is busy fighting the geography of anywhere."  Thats like saying no matter who you are, where you live, what you do, what  you like, we'll find something wrong with you and we will fight it.  This Saturday, they are fighting big box stores by organizing a "Social Sculpture Parade" for people to put small boxes into a big box, to what, symbolize how it takes dozens of small stores to equal the might of a big box store.  I'm sure the visual cacophony resulting from such a symbolic and artistic protest will bring many to tears, and will move all of the broke, self-righteous hipsters involved to keep guilting telling their wealthy not-so-hipster friends to go shop local.  

Anyway, here's the review already.

Why Deathwish Records Has So Many Good Bands...

I listen to a lot of music, and I tend to do so focusing on a particular genre at a time.  My last genre was the pulsating sensation of french electronica - mostly the stuff on Ed Banger, but I came across a lot of other good bands through some late night internet browsing (like the Bloody Beetroots, Punks Jump Up, the Bumblebeez, and the Field.)  I also learned that there was this whole new dance coming out of the French electronic scene called "tektronik".

 

Admittedly, I've watched my fair share of this utterly mesmerizing and ridiculous dancing.  (for a sample, click here, here or here - but watch out, it just might ruin French electronic music for you too.).  That was when I knew it was time to move onto a new genre.  I think my psyche instinctually sought balance to the overwhelming femininity of the French muzak by craving once again hardcore music.  

I've always loved hardcore music, but I've always been horrendously picky in choosing the bands that I can listen to and really get into their music.  Some of my favorite hardcore bands that still get rotation are the Refused, Converge, Transistor Transistor, Envy, and Das Oath.  So lately I've been searching out some good new hardcore bands, which, like I said is really hard because so much hardcore is like this Korn-y numetal prog-rock crap.  So many bands these days have at least one element that render them unlistenable - like a singer who sings all Megadethy, with that weird kind of accent.  Or they are the Locust, and just want to please themselves with so many rapid-fire, amorphous hardcore ejaculations, that I just feel jizzed all over after I listen to it.  

So yes, I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to hardcore music.  For this reason Converge really stands apart as one of my all time favorite hardcore bands and one of the most important bands currently playing music. (Emusic used to have almost all of their music available, but apparently not anymore.) Not only do I find their musicianship and songwriting impeccable, but they are real.  I came across further evidence of this tonight while I was browsing emusic, and again ended up checking out Deathwish Records bands again.  In the last few weeks I keep going back to Deathwish because so many of their bands keep coming up so satisfactory.  And as I was looking at different bands, I kept noticing that Jacob Bannon did almost all of the album covers.  Jacob Bannon, the name sounds familiar.  Yes, it is Converge's singer.  Then I notice that a bunch of the albums are produced by Kurt Ballou, Converge's guitarist.  After a quick search it turns out Deathwish is Jake Bannon's record label, and Converge is obviously involved in the recording and designing of Deathwish's bands.  Its no wonder then that I've taken so keenly to these bands, and I will now investigate them with renewed interest and fervor.   

p.s. I'll have a review up next week about the Deathwish band that I've really been enjoying lately.....

Addendum to the Burial review

I'll admit that the review of Burial's Untrue was rather hastily composed after a brief listen.  After downloading the album off emusic this weekend and having the chance to listen a couple times all the way through, I think I would assign more importance to this album than in the initial review.  This is a hauntingly beautiful album, with masterfully woven themes that appear throughout the work on a whole.  I'm not terribly versed in step music (dub, 2step, jungle etc) but that is mainly because there is rarely anything I consider really meaningful or important that I've come across.  In this way Untrue really seems to me to be an important album.  

In fact, I am likely going to go download his debut also. 

On a side note, we're going to start compiling album reviews on emusic.  To see them, go visit our emusic profile. 

burnout gone horribly right wrong

Review: Burial - Untrue

Untrue is comprised of myriad familiar musical elements that I've never heard combined in this particular formula before. In many ways, Burial follows a somewhat traditional house music song structure, with heavy beats, psychedelic bass lines, silky/soulful vocal accompaniments, and even uses a lot of sinewy synth sounds – however - Burial manages to incorporate all of these elements without sounding like house music, which is a good thing. Some of the aforementioned elements are reminiscent of the Streets (Archangel), Faithless (Ghost Hardware) and even Radiohead (Etched Headplate and almost the whole album in a way). In a way, Undead’s amorphously textural soundscapes remind me of Fennesz, but where Fennesz calls it good, Burial adds an entire albums more of music. Undead really works is in its ability to create rich, memorable songs without having any distinguishable melody. Instead, the depth defining contrast between the percussive patterns of the clonky snare sound and the chunky lows is the real feature of the album.

Burial on Emusic

Spotlight: 108

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon 108 in my recent searches of emusic looking for my monthly download stipend.

108 actually has a history back to the mid 90's as one of the "krishna-core" bands that emerged around the most unlikely of religious influences, Krishna. You might have seen the jovial Hare Krishnas in your neighborhood (they have a temple sort of meeting house in Spanish Fork, Utah) as they bounce around chanting trying to cheer everyone up. Not the most natural candidate to breed a whole movement of hardcore bands, but the results were equally as delightful.

I find 108's latest album, A New Beat From a Dead Heart, to be refreshingly congruent with their older stuff (granted, I have only heard their album from the mid-90's called Holyname - which was a single 50'ish minute track) Call me old fashioned, but so much of what is deemed hardcore these days seems so overridden with metal elements. Even the vocals on hardcore albums these days so rarely consist of real screaming, it is usually some sort of distortion effect to make even the singers most angst-ridden wails sound just so horrendous and bereaved. 

108 on emusic

108 on myspace

Tribute: Mike Tyson

This guy is so beautifully raw. He is more punk rock than 99% of the self-proclaimed punks who come from suburban oases.  I could watch an hour of Mike Tyson clips. I love how he refers to sex as fornicating; its so unusually formal. In this 6 minute clip I think he mentions fornicating at least 12 times.

Top 100 Liberals & Conservatives

The British paper, The Daily Telegraph, saw fit to compile a list of the top 100 liberals and conservatives in America.

The list in my opinion is horribly disjointed, and uses the placement to spur controversy rather than to really document those who really influence politics in America.

Separated at birth? Lansing Dreiden & the New Young Pony Club

What is interesting is that I stumbled upon both of these bands around the same time a few months ago ... I heard of Lansing Dreiden from a friend and recently got my nahds on the New Young Pony Club's latest LP.  

I was plenty satisfied by NYPC's Hiding on the Staircase, in fact its bassline engraved itself in my memory such that a week or so later when I heard the Lansing Dreiden song I made the connection.

Go ahead, listen to both and tell me if there aren't some striking similarities....

http://www.myspace.com/newyoungponyclub

http://www.myspace.com/lansingdreiden

Madonna and Mormonism

I've been recently reflecting on the truly inspiring news story where Madonna claimed that she is an "Ambassador for Judaism." You probably know somewhat of Madonna's self-congratulatory ascent from:

this...

"When is he going to ask me to take this oversized Hanes v-neck off?" 

to this ...

"Practicing Kabbalah likes makes me feel so esoteric..."

Madonna is perhaps the most prominent celebrity as of late to convert to the sexy-mystic religion of Kabbalah.  Britney Spears would easily qualify as the least inspiring.  But there are tons of other celebrities that have in recent years taken an interest in Kabbalah like Demi Moore, Rosanne, Barr, Jeff Goldblum, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Ritchie, David and Victoria Beckham, and Elizabeth Taylor.

What none of these celebrities are likely aware of are the distinct, if only underlying, ties between the ancient Kabbalah and the founder of the LDS Church - Joseph Smith.  

According to Harold Bloom, a Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, Joseph Smith inculcated in his restorative religious movement crucial elements of Kabbalah that normative Judaism had come to faze out.  

"Smith's imaginative recapture of crucial elements, elements evaded by 

normative Judaism and by the Church after it. The God of Joseph Smith 

is a daring revival of the God of some of the Kabbalists and Gnostics, 

prophetic sages who, like Smith himself, asserted that they had returned 

to the true religion. . . . Either there was a more direct Kabbalistic influence 

upon Smith than we know, or, far more likely, his genius reinvented 

Kabbalah in the effort necessary to restore archaic Judaism." 

(Bloom, The American Religion, pg. 95)

If the Restoration that founded LDS Church required the restoration of all things, wouldn't it only be natural that we see elements of archaic Judaism via Kabbalah in LDS doctrine?  Moreover, don't you think that if Madonna were to really investigate the esoteric underbelly of the real LDS Gospel paradigm she would be pleasantly surprised?

Is it wrong?

.... that I drive around all day hoping to see horrific car accidents?

Sex Pistols Update via Pitchfork confirmation

Yes, we here at MEGAVORE read pitchfork almost every day. It is an indie-rock music review site full of complete assholes, but it is a good way to find out about new music, and their perspective is intermittently informative.

Today, however, I was pleased to find a similarly estranged commentary regarding the Sex Pistols performance last night on the Tonight Show.

As quoted from PitchforkMedia: "There's this punk rock band, see, called the Sex Pistols, they were a big deal in the 1970s, and last night they played on the "Tonight Show". Watch John Lydon as he shimmies like your drunk uncle onstage at your cousin's wedding. If you've ever identified strongly with this band, you may want to skip this one, or better yet, head over to YouTube to check out old stuff like this. (link to old Sex Pistols performances)

Here's the actual performance so that you can see for yourself.

How exactly are they still doing this?

I think that in a way, there is a part of us deep down at our core that can understand core punk rock. It is a primal defiance to all rules, animosity towards authority, and the ritualistic trespassing of societal mores. We are all human animals and can tap into our innate sense of anarchy. At least we could when we were 15.

"What you say about my mohawk beeitch"

But after the frustrating hormonal surges subside, most of us begin to think more clearly as we gradually begin to understand that the world not quite as we envisioned it at 15, and that even if it isn't quite how we would like it, there are more productive ways to enact the change we wish to seek than churning out angst-ridden bar-chord anthems in our custom tailored jeans and 24 hole docs....
 
There are, of course, exceptions.  And perhaps the most profound and disturbing exception to the aforementioned notion is Johnny Rotten - the singer of the Sex Pistols who has never seemed willing or wanting to shed his incessantly ascorbic punk philosophy.  Granted, this guy deserves some credit because he started one of the most important punk bands in history ....

"Are you havin a laugh?"

But in reality, this guy is over 50 years old, and he is still performing his beef jerky punk songs about anarchy. Just tonight I saw him on the Tonight Show performing as the Sex Pistols!!!  I'm all for people milking as much money as possible out of what they have done in the past, but there is something kind of sad about watching such old guys play something that is best to be left to 15 year olds. 

"If only Sid could see me now!"

Justice on Jimmy Kimmel

I managed to catch Justice on Jimmy Kimmel last night, which, I have to admit was a rather strange delivery. The idea itself seemed pretty solid ... to have a lip sync band of famous icons like Michael Jackson, Rick James, and Stevie Wonder (I forgot who the guitarist was supposed to be) But after the two guys from justice messed with some ghettoblaster, the song just played as if off a cd, and the lip syncing got down right tedious. In the end, I think it is lazy for electronic artists to not offer even any attempt to pretend like they are somehow involved in the playback process. I can give Justice a point or two for creativity, but I think they miscalculated just how long the song seems for the impersonators to just be syncing. In the end, its nice to see such seemingly indomitable artists make some sort of blunder, after all we're all human after all.

... the shape of MEGAVORE to come

as MEGAVORE (debating whether to pursue an all-caps spelling in the future) slowly metamorphosizes from an amorphous and antagonistic idea into a full-fledged online production, its anonymous progenitors patiently deliberate on the temperament and acidity of their frankenstonian experiment, as well as carefully sculpt the initial content that will shape MEGAVORE forevermore.  

 

first post

we just created megavore.  it will eventually become a daily blog.