Pop Premiership Week 11 RESULTS now with REVEALS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Judge is IN. dubdobdee says:

"So thx everyone and well done finding me stuff i didn't know -- not as hard as you might think, my knowledge is all big unexpected holes. Glee-count: high! Surprise-count: low but one definite mystery. Economy-count: haha 2 songs at or over the ten-min mark and one at nearly 7! Write-abt count: well about half of this stuff I could have written lots more about. Can't-write-about count: hmmm, we shall see shan't we?

01. Ish Marquez - "Gin Is Not My Friend": The yelps that open this are fantastic -- then when it reaches the actual real song the singer is pulled between an intense lean into the story and shape, and relaxing back and enjoying the feel of his own voice -- and the latter gets to me more than the former. Me, I'm torn between the way it reminds me of Love (yay!) and Men at Work (boo!): the latter based on a mishearing ("Dave" for "Babe") which was a symptom of the faint forcedness of the feel of the tale the singer's telling about himself (he's telling himself ME SO BOHEMIAN, but I'm more interested in his uneasiness except when he's on his own, only he won't let that become the subject of the words. 7th place - LOSE - strange_powers out of title race after narrow defeat.

02. Green Velvet - "Shake And Pop (Grantman Remix)": I wish it was more rigorously formalist/self-descriptive, less "satirical" -- the voices saying "shake and pop" sound more sardonic than celebratory, and to pull that off it needed to be a bit less brittle. Keeps its crispness, what B3n W4tson would call its "objectivity": to me that's a mark of fear, of course. Imagining the "social" of this song is what bamboozles me here, I think; I can't really imagine it somewhere I'd enjoy being (or even somewhere people that i like wd go, even if i just said, OK, aee you when you get home!). 10th place - LOSE - nervy hauntedballroom side slip to defeat.

03. Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom – “Relevee (Carl Craig Remix)”: I got very excited that this reach of near-minimalist Techno (?) might be permutationally prime -- that the three main riffs (one being the beat track) only came together at the combined product of their length! It's not, they're all standardly four-square, but the asymmetry is strong enough that it took me ages to work out a way to count and hear this, and i enjoyed those ages. Very rich and inventive down within its elegantly narrow line, as the filters and flanges breathe -- I slightly feel the central riff is a bit too blurry soundwise (maybe less so if hyperloud at a rave), but it makes up for it with the sudden arrival, 8 (!) mins in, of clattery arhythmic piano, like garage feat.Mike Mantler! 3rd place - WIN - alexmacpherson keeps it tight at the back as play-off bid gains pace.

04. Cascada - "Everytime We Touch (Styles And Breeze Remix)": Someone is so shameless they headed straight for my SCOOTER-BUTTON!! And IT WORKED: bcz i am (it's widely known) 1xHO 4 BOSH... What have we here? i. chipmunked passion; ii. a speed-up; iii. crowd sounds (dubbed I hope!); iv. anthemic keyb-brass skatey inserts; v. that little tremble (more moving than anything else in this collection) in "her" voice ("I can't let you go0o0o0!"); vi. VOCODER (actually pitch-shifting, but everyone calls it vocoder); and vii. BOSH BOSH BOSH!! 1st place - WIN - braisedbywolves plays the direct game: the purists won't like it but the fans rejoice as they're saved from relegation.

05. Helloween - "Walls Of Jericho / Ride The Sky”: LET THERE BE SHRED! This even features a THUNDERSTORM! In my psyched mind's eye, these limber longhairs stand on-stage atop a MIGHTY LEGO CASTLE!! I am guessing this is Jel_Bugle's entry, and supposing this is maybe Dragonforce? If I had a complaint I'd say a lack of texture-detail -- is it live? -- but I am grinning happily from start to finish. 2nd place - WIN - jel_bugle notches up another entertaining win.

06. Poulenc - "Toccata" (performed by Glenn Gould): Somewhat thrown by this -- my notes say "post-stravinsky dryness", 1930s, german, neue sachlichkeit? (sp.)" -- but somewhere in the middle the little ragtime turns and staccato bonk of the bass notes suddenly made me wonder is it CONLON NANCARROW? How many actual pianos is this plz? Or is it one big giant player piano? Concerto for player-piano? I like the arrangement -- hiring the orchestra just to play at the start! Anyway, this was the SURPRISE, and i want to know more. 5th place - WIN - inhibitorylinks squeaks a win and has one hand on the trophy.

07. Green Velvet - "Genedefekt": Slight sigh at the easyreach content stab of the vocal here -- the beats and sounds do all this spookwork, then the vocals just mutter "Gene Defect!" and that's kind of nothing-y, the voices sit so tight in their own zone and don't help (i mean, you could skip up off a topic like "gene defect' to write a bunch about this song, but it would take you nowhere the the sounds). Dance music for people who don't want to quite admit that they're into dance music? ("I'm concerned about social issues AND science AND I'm clubbing!") -- so then I started thinking about Metamatic (which is a forefather of this): is there a link between John Foxx intoning "UNDERPASS!" and the Underpants Gnomes: "Phase 2. ????" is the bit that's missing from this song, the jump between the content and the "content". 9th place - LOSE - katstevens relegated after pallid performance.

08. Bjork - "Declare Independence": Reminded me (very variously) of beloved No Wave girl-trio Ut, long-forgotten one-release Peel fave And Yet the Native Hipsters.., and pseudo-marxist avant-blowhards Art and Language -- before I decided to be put in mind of Swiss protogothstresses Malaria! Twenty years ago (back in the era when Declare Independence! seemed more a promise than a doom) I would have been all over this -- I still really like it, the hyperfuzzed bass-and guitar, the bashy drums, the carefully layered primitivism, the cross little girl in the middle (even if "start yr own currency!" now strikes me as more the problem than the solution). 6th place - DRAW - a point easily enough to ensure fugitivemotel safety.

09. Planning To Rock - "I Wanna Bite Ya": See long ago there was Chr!s Cvtler's dourly smug R3commended R3cords roster: music that was politically saving the world by resisting the blandishments of conventional popsong and sentiment --- and really a little too pleased with itself for not being rock, and having non-rock instruments, and singing in a wackily "alienating" way about "sex", and thing is, I had to sit through far too much in that vein. Anyway this is majorly an unfair "reminds me of" vote, I guess, so apologies if whoever suggested it really likes it :( 11th place - LOSE - zenith's side choke at the last stage to leave play-off dreams in tatters.

10. Uyhgur Musicians from Xinjiang – “Nava Muqam”: It's H from Steppes!!!! Grizzled, wrinkly shaman huddles in his smoke-filled yurt, just 70 versts from the bleak polluted salt-flats of the vanishing Aral Sea: the stench of tanned horsehide, the chokingly thick reek of tundra briquettes, everyone present tipsy on fermented elk piss --- ok even with my dusted-off "World Music" hat on I'm not quite sure where this is from, anywhere from Finland to Mongolia, so I've opted for the middle, where there's more Muslim presence and sobriety (this isn't ecstatic vision-trance, it's storytelling). 4th place - WIN - xyzzzz_ snatches a win to keep title race just alive.

11: The Prototypes - "Kaleidoscope": I infer this is called "Kaleidoscope" by Elvis Costello, but I never heard it before (a bit to my surprise): if it's an imitator, he's VERY good at exactly the things which made Costello matter (and gets them wrong the same way also). Long ago I wrote a big piece abt Costello and the State of the Song, and how did he deal with what Dance wz doin to it (ans = fled for safety into jazz and classical form): well this sorta addresses the issue -- but even tho I like the carousel-automaton cyber-relentlessness he uses the beats to bring, pop as pitiless prison, the (great) chorus reminds me too much the strain it is for him to be THROWAWAY (his real prison is his own mannerism). No one in rock knows how to do Surfin Bird any longer. 8th place - LOSE - player registration mix-ups have no effect on bengraham's defeat.

To compound this week's tension I have left i. the track list and ii. my league table at home. However I will try and cobble together a reveal at four-ish.

There's been a fairly steady flow of final-week tracks. I'm not going to do anything with them until Sunday, when I have some free time at last, but get them to me when you can! I'll put the Chart Champ results up when I get them.

Comments

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Actually I would've thought this is artist was a fairly safe submission for LoP, all things considered (and depending on the home player, of course).

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

(Viz. Track 10)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I agree but not for this particular home player (I would have been right too) - danger obv that most poptimists might have heard most of her material unless you go for an obscure b-side (and she has some terrific ones) or something off the v new album (as per here)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It is a good thing I was never a home player.

NEXT TIME!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Why should we get all the fun! ;)

Re: NEXT TIME!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Oh definitely I will need an assistant though, to run it when it's my week as home player.

Given that I have pretty similar tastes to byebyepride I expect to struggle.

Anyway this is all quite a while away, there is the Pop Open to deal with first and isn't Euro 2008 on its way

Re: NEXT TIME!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well I think my tactics may be more at fault than my taste. But I haven't been dabbling in anything desperately exotic recently, and I have zero sense of what things I like are or aren't well-known, plus I seem to be developing an almost total inability to empathise with other people, so I found it hard to pick stuff.

Re: NEXT TIME!

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

We could just all bombard you with de-tagged tracks in a massive culminatory week in which you play both leagues!