A.C. Marias - One of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing)

Another abrupt change of pace, this album features some rather disorienting electronic sounds and fairly straight-forward bass guitar overlaid by the flat, disaffected vocalizing of (according to Wikipedia) Angela Conway. 

While the vocal style rarely changes, the music on this album is actually fairly diverse. Wikipedia says Ms. Conway was assisted by one Bruce Gilbert, of a band called Wire. A Google search turns up hundreds of links for this band, and although I've never heard of them, they seem to have been quite important to any number of people. 

I'm beginning to think my last post may have been a little too harsh on Mint, or at least that the aim of its harshness was mistaken. Rather than an exploitation tourist, Mint might in fact be simply a tourist of forgotten (or altogether unnoticed) cultural niches. This is an avocation I can respect, I guess, if not entirely endorse. I've always preferred deep immersion in a prevailing culture to the romanticization of those cultures that have failed to thrive, but this is probably a reflection of the relative ease of my lifestyle. Were I in another demographic situation, I might not take such a kind view of the prevailing culture of our times. Given what I know of his presentation of himself, his manners of dress and conversation, and the circumstances under which he came to stay at my apartment (more on which later), it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Mint has often found himself on the short end of the stick, culturally speaking.

(Actually, all of the above is probably wrong. My admittedly limited experience with Mint's type of cultural, shall we say, specialist, the music or film snob, the fashion enthusiast, and so on, tells me that these people are in general so grossly over-privileged as to be (ironically, I suppose) unaware of the fact, and consequently to gin up a sentimental (and inaccurate) idea of themselves as somehow outcast or looked down upon.)

24-Carat Black - Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth

At the very least, this is a change of pace. According to the blog I Killed The Darkness (ikilledthedarkness.blogspot.com), the 24-Carat Black was "composer and noted souse Dale Warren's attempt to document the plight of the inner city through song, spoken word, and judicious use of chimes."

The genre is funk, I guess, or soul (I honestly don't know the difference), and the lyrical focus is just as I Killed The Darkness says. This was recorded in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, and the lyrical tone reflects that. 

The music is actually quite enjoyable, as opposed to the awful noise of 16 Bitch Pile-up. My question is whether my mysterious house guest, Lewis Mint, is involved somehow in the ongoing struggle for civil rights, or is rather the kind of counter-cultural tourist that has become all too familiar these days... You know the type: A part-time Tarantino on his own private exploitation trip. Put more plainly, does Mint actually care about "the plight of the inner city", or does he just get off pretending he's some kind of post-racial super-liberal even though he's never actually met a person of another race. (Mint is white, as this post should make plain, and my brief experience with him leads me to think he falls into the latter category, however disappointing that may be.)

16 Bitch Pile-up & Sword Heaven - Split LP

Next comes this nearly unlistenable release by two bands with utterly ridiculous names. Sword Heaven would seem to imply some sort of violence worship, a motif to which 16 Bitch Pile-up adds an uncomfortable element of misogyny. Neither theory can be expanded upon based on any element of either band's so-called music.

The album consists of three tracks, the first of which is 15 minutes of something by 16 Bitch Pile-up. Apparently recorded live at someplace called "bld", there is not much going on here but accumulating layers of sounds, ranging from little electric squiggles to something not unlike a jet engine firing far up in the sky. There is little rhythmic dynamism to it, and the cumulative effect is akin to what I imagine a white-noise machine would produce.

This is followed by two tracks by Sword Heaven. The first, "We of the Fucking Mountains" begins with some kind of primordial gurgling accompanied by brushed cymbals and proceeds from there. There is a steady drumbeat of a primitive sort, the bleating of what sounds like some kind of horn, and some truly horrible shrieking. The next track, "7minus1times3" (also known as 18), begins with a very slow beat, some unidentifiable noises, and the kind of vocal sounds I expect would be all too familiar to any phone sex operator. A stringed instrument, probably a guitar, makes its appearance shortly thereafter, along with a sound like that produced when you flick one of those tightly coiled springs that keep a door from gouging the wall. Eventually the tempo increases, and the whole thing devolves into another shrieking mess.

I honestly cannot imagine what kind of person would listen to music like this for fun. Maybe I'd rather not track Mint down after all.

12twelve - L'universe

The first album on Mint's iPod is "L'universe" by 12twelve. The Spanish language Wikipedia entry on the group (translated) by Google, says they were founded in Barcelona in 1998 by Jaume L. Pantaleon, Javier Garcia, Jose Rosello, and Jens Neumaier.

I know next to nothing about music, and while this sounds like jazz to me, Wikipedia says it also qualifies as "Post-rock", whatever that means. "L'universe" was released in 2006, and consists largely of uptempo jazz, featuring melodic saxophone solos, and occasional bursts of atonality. 

Overall, the music is fairly pleasant, though the more abstract passages are a little difficult for me. I wonder: is Mint a jazz fan dipping into "Post-rock", or vice-versa. He's younger than I would expect for a typical jazz listener, but it seems dangerous to rely on such unfounded stereotypes. It could be he's a musician himself, a high-school band type who discovered an anachronistic love for the music of another generation, excited about a contemporary band carrying on those old traditions. Suppositions such as this can only be proven by further listening.