I Wanna See All My Friends At Once

Dinosaur L, "#5 (Go Bang)" (original mix?) - Ah, my sweet, nurturing stupidity; truly ye shall rescue me from perdition and carry me up into the light of Knowing like none other. I mean, in light of the fact that I've rather emphatically called "Kiss Me Again" the greatest disco song in the history of everness before, you'd think that I'd have hurdled over my grandmother's corpse at the hint of a chance to attack some of their other material, but somehow I managed to "acquire" a copy of 24/24 Music and then forget about them completely until this weekend. And THANK FUCK FOR THAT; the more I try to listen to Arthur Russell, the more I realize that a lot of his appeal lies in the slapdashedness of his approach, and that "Kiss Me Again" is really something of an outlier - along with the (also pretty damned great) "Is It All Over My Face", it's probably as close to "traditional" arrangements as Russell may have gotten. I mean, I don't want to pass myself off as superior to, say, Borat when it comes to my understanding of Russell's work, but fuck - by now I've gone through The World of Arthur Russell, First Thought Best Thought, about half of World of Echo, and a bunch of random shit I picked up along the way; I'd like to think that that's enough to know whether or not there's an elephant in the room in the first place.

In Russell's case, the elephant I keep bumping into seems to be his love for...hell, what's the word I want to use here? "Improvisational"? "Free-wheeling"? "Chaotic"? "Jazzy"? None of those terms really feel particularly close to the mark, but I do think they reflect an important characteristic of Russell's work, namely the way his music pays off (or more accurately, "doesn't"). A huge part of the reason I can't shut up about "Kiss Me Again" lies in the way it has, like, four or five moments when EVERYTHING just kicks in, and when you're dealing with something as intricate and purpose-driven as that song, those moments can be as satisfying as catching your car's winshield wipers sync'ing up with the song playing over your stereo. But as hard as I keep looking, I've never been able to find another Russell song seeking to offer those kind of pleasures - most of his other songs seem to be about the winding, twisting journeys towards those moments rather than about the moments themselves. Which is fine, of course, but not exactly the most effective way to make music for a guy whose iPod has the complete discography of Jacques Lu Cont.

Fortunately, as previously mentioned, I am a forgetful idiot, and as a consequence I seem to have stumbled onto "Go Bang" right as my preconceptions about Russell seemed to be calcifying. I hasten to add that "Go Bang" is hardly another "Kiss Me Again" - it's very much in the Derek Smalls Presents A Disco Odyssey vein - but for once, I don't think it suffers by the comparison; put simply, the fact that I went into "Go Bang" without expecting a "Kiss Me Again"-style raveup kept me from looking for that structure and instead led me to enjoy the song on its own virtues. And it really is a pretty virtuous song - it may never really drop the hammer, but you better believe it swells and rolls like the ocean, and it's packed front to back with a niggling little synth (which immediately makes me think of Superman Lovers' "Starlight") and the labors of an uncanny rhythm section. But it's also got that unmistakable Russell patina of humanity - unlike a record on Philly International or Salsoul, Russell makes you conscious of both every instrument being played and the fact that it's being played by a human being. The best example really has to be the vocals - there's a vague sense of study at work in them, I guess, but really all I hear is the struggle to catch up with the high notes during the "ohhhhhTHANK YOUUUUU" bit, and if you're up for appreciating it, it's just a great, totally balls-out sound. As great or balls-out as the trumpets and the keys and the xylophone and the cello and the rhythm section and the kitchen sink all dropping the bomb at once? Of course not. But certainly worth listening to at least once - if only to make sure that you genuinely don't find any value in this kind of thing. I speak from experience when I say that "Go Bang" can prove you wrong on that count. (Click here to buy a used copy of 24/24 Music from GEMM)

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, "Electricity" - Meanwhile, if I've learned anything from that Martin Hannett comp that's been making some noise lately, I've learned that I might as well call him the Arthur Russell of post-punk, insofar as that I respect his work as much as just about anyone in history without ever having the need to listen to very much of it. When you're dealing with artists strongly influenced by dub music, after all, you're dealing with people whose goal is to create as vast an expanse of sonic space as possible, which is fine but can easily just lead to foregrounding the artists' inability to fill that space with anything particularly interesting. That's not to say that I don't think Hannett can fill sonic space, of course; I just don't think he did it very often in a way that still sounds fresh and compelling to my ears after fifteen years of people copying his approach with better technology, and unfortunately for my credibility I see little point in listening to music through other people's ears. Of course, when Hannett manages to Not Bore James Cobo - undoubtedly the goal of all music ever recorded or imagined by any musician ever - the results tend to be thrilling; "Electricity" isn't necessarily a technical showcase (or at least not these days), but the interplay between that deathly simplistic tinkling little piano line and the insistent drone of the synth organ underneath it is just fucking goregeous in any event, especially when aside from Andy McLuskey's voice, that combination's the only thing filling any of the volume left by those cavernous drums. It really is quite a little song - hell, it's good enough to induce me to type out their full band name despite the necessity of checking my spelling, like, forty extra times. Stupid Brits. WAH CAIN'T THAY TALK AMURRICAN LIKE GOD'S FOLK? (Click here to buy Zero: A Martin Hannett Story 1977-1991 from Amazon.co.uk)

QQ, "Poverty" - I went on something of a reggae and dancehall bender this weekend, but I'd like to think that I'd have turned a song this good up even without the gentle proddings of Dave Stelfox - I love it when songs make it devastatingly clear why you should like them, and "Poverty" lays things as bare as anything I've stumbled over lately. And for once, it's not really even a case of the music - I mean, the Spiritual War riddim at work here is pretty unassailable, but c'mon; the thing that sets this apart has to be QQ, the grade-schooler (grade-schooler! I know United States Senators who couldn't communicate convictions as strong as these when it comes to the poor!) who provides the vocal for the track. I dunno - maybe I'm just a sucker for people struggling to hit the high notes, but can I help it if it always comes out sounding like The Act Of Giving A Hundred And Ten Percent? Can I help it if I think it's more interesting to wonder if this kid can hit these notes than to know for a damn certainty that Mariah Carey can? Can I give myself a break long enough to appreciate the contrast between the kid's up-from-the-depths approach to singing and the backup singers that show up during the chorus? No, no, and yes, respectively. End of story. (Click here to buy Reggae Hits 35, a compilation featuring "Poverty")

ELSEWHERE

- In real life, of course, I've probably spent years of my life virulently denouncing both New York City (complicated story, although it mostly comes down to the fact that the city as an entity pretty much has it out for me whenever I've gone there to visit, although the fact that the Long Blondes are going to be playing there and not out here this summer doesn't help) and Madonna (uncomplicated story, I just don't like more than five of her songs at most and yet I've still have to endure people gushing about her as far back as I can remember). I will, however, break with tradition just long enough to point any Madonna fans living in NYC towards Dance Floor Dispatch's current contest for a floor ticket to see Madonna on Thursday night as a gesture of solidarity with fellow NC-escapee Kitty Laverne. The deadline for entries passes tomorrow, so y'all better get on that if you want it.