Amon Tobin ISAM (he's inside the biggest cube there)

​If Decibel's opening night was a compelling proof that electronic music can be as "real" and live as any other, last night illustrated one of electronic music's fundamental tensions: state-of-the-art technical innovation versus good old-fashioned songcraft. Technological innovations have driven popular electronic music since the beginning--from Kraftwerk's Klingklang Studio to acid house's discovery of the latent possibilities of the Roland TB-303 bass synth to the rise of sampling and software sequencing throughout the '90s and '00s. So too, electronic music has always been animated by the divide between recognizable songs--with choruses or discrete movements--and more functional tracks, built with the DJ in mind, patterned around builds and releases and auditory effects rather than traditional song structures. Last night, two of Decibel's headliners provided a handy illustration of that divide: Amon Tobin, with his dazzling audio/visual demonstration ISAM, and Ladytron, with their more traditional, but highly effective electro pop.

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For the Atlantan metal giants, The Hunter is a different kind of album than any other in their catalogue, both in its light conceptuality, and its downscaled--or more condensed psychedelia. Of course there isn't as much guttural lyric barking as in the earliest Mastodon recordings, that's not their shtick any more; their vocals are the piercing, back-of-the-throat screams of Troy Sanders, and the haunting wails of Brent Hinds. Brann Dailor's drumming has always been extremely complex, which has caused him to be both revered for his technical prowess, and shunned for his showy, out-of-pocket fills, and not much has changed here in either respect. They're as good as ever in my book. The Hunter's tracks are short, concise bursts of creativity (although they have a sludgier production value than the super crispness of their last few released that enabled you to delightfully--if painstakingly--pick apart the core elements), with the band's signature braun. It's an experiment, but is writing an album like this at this point in their career a risk? Probably not a huge one, and plus, they'll probably do something completely different next time around, so even if you don't dig it, there's no need to worry.

Follow along after the jump...

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Red Jacket Mine joins 70 other Seattle bands at SW's Reverb Local Music Festival on Saturday, October 8. They play the Tractor at 3 p.m.

​This post is part of the special Reverb Questionnaire series in which we ask local bands to discuss the legacy of the Seattle music explosion of 1991, as well as the class of 2011.

SW: What do you think the legacy of the 1991 grunge explosion is for the Seattle scene?
Red Jacket Mine's Lincoln Barr: Well, most of the characters are still kicking around and playing in bands - many of them quite good - so that's one legacy. Pick up a VCR at Value Village, pop in your long-neglected copy of Hype!, and see how many folks you recognize from the previous night's show at the Sunset.

Do you hear many influences of the sound in today's bands?
While there seems to be an emphasis on kinder, gentler sounds right now, I think you can draw a pretty straight line (through Mr. Elliott Smith and host of pretenders) back to the '91 sound. The melodies and rhythms are decidedly white, for the most part, and 'feelings' are still the primary lyrical focus. The '90s took the hump right out of rock, I'm afraid.

In what ways are your band influenced by the 1991 sound?
We try to ignore music made after 1982 or so. I've heard that listening to too much music made during your lifetime will make you go blind, and I'm not about to take that chance.

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​The last time I sang outside of Seattle was on a Tuesday in early August at a place called Time Out Sports Bar in Downtown Kirkland. Last Tuesday, I happened to find myself back at Time Out, but this time it was their location on Front Street in Issaquah.

The Issaquah Time Out is a Pittsburgh Steelers bar. There were flags, pictures, novelty street signs, and above the entryway hung a huge banner that read, "YOU'RE IN STEELERS COUNTRY." As a 15-year Seahawks season ticketholder and someone still devastated by what happened in Super Bowl XL, it was pretty unsettling to be around. Even more frustrating was the fact that there was Seahawks decor all over the place as well. I didn't appreciate the mixed message.

There were around 10 people spread throughout the bar when I got there at 10 p.m. The place has two levels: The bar and KJ station were on the main level, and the lower level featured pool tables and led to a back patio.

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Blackalicious' Blazing Arrow has been one of my favorite albums since it was released in 2002. It's perfect for the home, club, or road trips. The title track's (above) Harry Nilsson reference is as tasty as it comes.

The band's coming to Seattle to play Showbox at the Market on Oct. 22 as part of City Arts Fest. Tickets are $19 in advance, or you can get in by buying an all-access wristband to the fest. Wristbands are recommended, as it will give you a chance to catch all the bands you like, even on the same night. That means you could catch, say, Lemolo down the street at the Croc before heading to the Showbox for Blackalicious.

But if you want to skip the paying process and get Blackalicious tix for free, drop me a line at ckornelis@seattleweekly.com by 4 p.m., and we'll pick a winner of a pair of tickets. Be sure to put "BLACKALICIOUS TIX" in the subject line.

Good luck, y'all!

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​Dwight Yoakam
Snoqualmie Casino
Thursday, September 29

When Dwight Yoakam played Snoqualmie Casino in June last year, my good friend and fellow Yoakam nerd Mark Allen jumped at the chance for us to go. But it wasn't going to work--I was in a wedding that weekend and couldn't budge. Mark ended up not going, and in the most bittersweet twist of countrified fate, passed away not too long afterward of the pancreatic cancer that had made his life hell for months.

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Jason Scott

​Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of spending an evening out with Scott Yoder, Stefan Rubicz, and Woody Brenton of Fuzzy Cloaks; this Sunday, October 2, the trio will be playing a show at the Comet. They've only played about a dozen shows since their inception a couple months ago; hopefully this weekend's will be nothing like the one they described to me as their worst show ever. This particular disaster was their second show, it occurred at Pioneer Square's 619 Building, and they only got through two and a half songs:

Yoder: Some guy said to us, "Yeah, it's gonna be a crazy party." We played there, and I think it was a bunch of teenagers who were harassing the guy who owned the gallery that the show was at. Some kids were tagging something, and the guy was really mad, and we were in the middle of a cover of that song "Sea of Love," that oldie-goodie song, and the guy grabbed the microphone from me, in the middle of this slow ballad song, and was like, "OK, show's over! Everybody go home!" And then it got really weird, because there were some teenagers who really wanted the band that was playing after us to play, they were stoked on them. And then the guy had a cut on his arm, and he started wiping his blood on some girl.

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Todd Hamm

Don't Talk to the Cops! (L-R): DJ BlesOne, Emecks, Gatsby (Larry Mizell, Jr.)

​
"This is what we do when we get off of work," says DJ BlesOne at a table in the upper room at Cafe Vita's main coffee house. "This is us opening a Budweiser and hanging out by the pool with our friends; this is our eighties beer commercial."

Bles is sitting with his Don't Talk to the Cops! bandmates Emecks and Gatsby (Larry Mizell, Jr.), the latter of whom is his other half in Mash Hall; two of this year's Reverb Fest. bands at one table.

"We're hustlers, but when it comes to music, that's not a hustle, that's our escape," adds Mizell. "That's us having fun, not us trying to pay the rent.

The band is laying out the set of ethics that guide them as artists, most of which seem to follow the principles instilled in BlesOne and Emecks over a lifetime of b-boy breakdancing and organized dance. The rap game is too standoffish in their minds, so they fall back on what they've learned from the dance world: "It's about competing with each other to be the best, but not stepping on each other," says Bles.

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Nice Hits! is a Reverb column that unironically dissects, reviews, and appreciates the best songs of the current Top 40. It is unsnobbishly premised on the logic that just because a lot of the music on the radio is crap doesn't mean all the music on the radio is crap.

​ Beyonce - Love On Top by zokerx

The hit: "Love on Top," Beyoncé (off 4).

Current chart position: Earlier this month, the song debuted at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Beyoncé's second-highest chart debut in her career; just this week it dropped off the chart, but it's still hanging in at #119 on iTunes.

The team: Beyoncé wrote "Love on Top" with Shea Taylor and Terius Nash--who is better known as The-Dream and who has written some of modern R&B's best hits, including Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Beyoncé's "Single Ladies." He also had a big hand on 4, co-writing some of the record's strongest tracks--"1+1," "Run the World (Girls)," "Countdown," and the fabulous bonus track "Schoolin' Life." The musical team of Beyoncé and The-Dream works so well--it's one of the most successful in pop music right now.

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The madly prolific AtomTM.

​If there was one common thread running through the better performances at Decibel Festival's opening night last night, it was the way they made the case for electronic music's legitimacy as "real" music, live music, played by real musicians. From Shigeto's adroit and jazzy live drumming to the camera trained close-up on AraabMuzik's blindingly fast sampler-pad-tapping fingers to the full-screen visual readout showing Atom TM's computer control parameters in real time, last night felt like a concerted effort to disprove the notion that "all these guys do is get on stage and press play." Except for Zomby, of course, but we'll get to that later.

The first thing I caught last night was Shigeto at Neumos--actually, the first thing I caught was a waft of patchouli upon walking into Neumos, but I'm willing to let that slide. Shigeto (aka Ghostly International artist Zach Saginaw) split his time between manning a laptop and some controls and sitting behind a drum kit, seeming to slightly favor the kit. His laptop loops ranged from dubby, liquid grooves to pretty electric piano melodies to, later, more beat-heavy material, but what was most impressive was how easily he just dropped into the drum kit and kept perfect time with them, without any visible earpiece or headphones to listen to a click track, just playing live to a monitor. At one point, he was keeping the beat on a cymbal with one hand and leaning over to manipulate a knob on his laptop controller with the other. He ended his set promptly at 11, asked the crowd if they were ready for AraabMuzik (they were), then conferred with someone in the wings and announced, "I guess I'm gonna keep going." AraabMuzik was AWOL.

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