Here’ s the latest so-called “indie” band to not like: 120 Days from Norway.
They’re pretty much the nazz with bloggers, NYC clubbers, after-party goers, and underfed hangers-on.
A certain pleasant-but-aggressive US publicity company recently took the band on as clients. Another artist on their roster is the unyieldingly hyped Lady Sovereign, which should tell you something. Also, they’re on Vice, which might tell you something else.
I’ve been innundated with requests to review 120 Days for my other “outlets,” to use a lame music biz phrase. Surely, I’m expected to just fall in line.
120 Days are touted as a “modern-day krautrock band,” or some such nonsense. Fuck that. The sound like The Strokes with analog keyboards.
First of all, krautrock was a genre marked by idiosyncracies: most of the groups were wildly different from one another in process and result. Bands like 120 Days, on the other hand, seem to adopt whatever aesthetic happens to be in fashion.
For the original krautrockers — a post WWII generation of defiant art-school dropouts — it was important to work outside the realms of “polite” European classicism and borrowed American blues. Obsessed with rhythm and repetition, they drew inspiration from African music as well as emerging audio technologies. This sound later found its pop mark with New Wavers like the Talking Heads and “reformed” proggers such as Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp. Bowie and Eno (who pretty much founded the New Wave) were both early champions.
Krautrockers sought to challenge preconceived notions of Germanic music, which had taken on some unfavorable associations. They traveled several sonic avenues, from the cold, motorik pulse of Neu! to the limber, pan-global grooves of Can. But some people assert that, with such a variety in sound, there is no real kratrock. This is a valid argument.
Anyway the little boys in 120 Days are about as far from Faust as a group can get. And that’s what I told their publicist.
No matter — they’ll no doubt get more exposure than I could give ’em by rocking those sponsored parties for Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player.
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“somebody has to call bullshit every once and a while”Thank god the common man has you to put a reality check on all of these press releases each of us gets every day. It’s once in a while, by the way.The 99% of music journalists who seem to be fine with mediocrity put some kind of spin on their writing. Some of them are influenced by publicists to say that merely decent stuff is great. And some say that every piece of crap recorded in a bedroom by someone they might run into the next day is a masterwork. I find the latter more offensive as a reader, especially when said scribe inexplicably starts slagging the decent but “overhyped” bands as if they’ve just discovered that there’s no Easter Bunny. But hey, maybe that’s just me.
i make plinky plonk on my laptop.its fun. i should take some of my cds over to pure pop.good idea.
Amen, Tan-man.Yeah, publicists are paid. So am I.But I’ve heard far more interesting CD-R releases local and otherwise than a lot of the assembly-line shit that comes down the industry pike.My musical worldview is fairly libertarian; bands can do whatever they like, and their agents can market it however they see fit. But somebody has to call bullshit every once and a while, or else there’s no difference between the “underground” and the prefab stuff that currently chokes the airwaves.AS far as 7D setting the bar low, I have to disagree. Some stuff has to be considered in respect to the environment in which it’s created. I personally try to respond to any album on its own terms. I’ve written plenty of “negative” notices about local releases. If I champion certain area efforts, it’s because they possess qualities that I believe are worthy of praise.The 120 Days record, upon repeat listens, fails to measure up in any significant way regardless of the hype surrounding it.That’s my opinion, anyway.But if one were to go back and read my original post and subsequent comments, one would see that I am only decrying the echo chamber so prevalent in mainstream criticism. The fact that 120 Days don’t personally appeal to me is secondary.I hate fake blues, funk and jam bands too, so there.I can only hope the baristas continue to concentrate more on creating art than appealing to the fickle tastes of Hype Lords.But we all probably have more important things to do than arguing about this. Maybe it’s creating compelling music and releasing it on CD-R.
Ah, see, I thought music reviews were supposed to be something resembling honest assessments of musical efforts, not puff pieces masquerading as “support from the community.” Thanks for clearing that up.And if you’ll name those three bands for me, I promise to buy a copy of each of their CD(R)s the next time their drummers deliver my pizza.
Yeah who do these fucking “baristas” think they are anyway! making their “plinky plonk”, pressing their, “cd-r’s” getting support from their “community”…what a bunch of douchebags.(i can think of 3 burlington bands, right off the top of my head, that have more “kraut” than 120Days.)
Gee whiz, paid publicists will say that their clients are the best thing since sliced bread, when sometimes they’re not! As much as this revelation may anger you, before you call a perfectly decent band “little boys” “not to be liked,” you might want to think about how low 7D sets the bar with regular fawning reviews of local dreck. I mean, 120 days are no Kraftwerk, but surely you recognize that they’re better than some local barista making plinky plonk on their laptop, burning it onto a CDR and selling it down at Pure Pop?
Oh, man! Did I miss a good week to be hanging out on the solidstate front stoop.I also get a ton of emails about 120 Days from publicists. Not my thing. Love the country but not the band.But, as you discussed, the wave of emails from publicists has ruined the chances of any decent band submitting their stuff to me via email. I pretty much bin all of them. Once in a while, I’ll listen to their links but it’s rare.Unfortunately, having talked to some other music bloggers, enough of them pay attention to the promo emails to keep the publicists thinking that it’s a winning idea. At the NEMO Music Festival blogger panel, someone asked how they could get us to listen to their band. My response was, “Well, when I ask my friend what he’s been listening to lately, you need to have him say your band’s name.” It initially got a giggle from the crowd but then they seemed a bit annoyed at the idea of how much harder that is then just sending out a blast email with 1,500 people on the distribution list.
This will go in my Top 10 Casey Rea Quotes of 2006 list:”The rest of the time he’s just farting in the wind to the applause of ironic hipsters.”Ah, the imagery.
Personally, I’d rather hear about the “weird out-of-print” stuff than new stuff. I usually only fall in love with a few new albums each year, but I tend to get turned on to dozens of greater older albums throughout the course of the year. It would be great for you to post your list and then we could all post what we’ve been listening to.
I can’t badmouth a place, just the “cool kids” driving rents up!Man, I get so freaked out by year-enders. I have a terrible short-term memory for such stuff. Also, I have the tendency to get more excited about weird out-of-print stuff or forgotten gems than I do new music.But I’ll tty!