Tuesday, August 19, 2008

TVD's Daily Wax | The Glove "Blue Sunshine"

It's hard to imagine that I wasn't really a Cure fan at one point (the more I think about it). Siouxsie & the Banshees - always. However, I actually thought that the Cure were mostly overrated not only in the gothic sense and the beginnings of their goth phase, but in general pop music. I mean --- I stuck to Bauhaus immediately when I first heard their material. Same with Tones on Tail. Joy Division. Public Image Limited. Cocteau Twins. I can go down the line pretty far with stuff from that era because so many of them blur the post-punk/gothic genre lines and ties with 4AD, etc. I guess this was b/c I was used to matching the Cure with "Friday I'm in Love" and got into them well after so many similar bands. However, after taking more time over the years breaking down their work --- especially 'Pornography' and 'Disintegration' --- I realized that I made a critical mistake in judgment. An ultra critical one. Robert Smith. I'm seriously sorry about overlooking your songwriting, composition and production gifts (:/). Siouxsie & the Banshees amazed me in the same way. Steve Severin's production work and approaches to their sound struck a chord with me instantly. Menacing, yet melodic. Minimal, yet heavily weighted. I think that I played 'The Scream' ten times in a row - top to bottom - when I first got that record. Seriously.

So imagine what happened when I first ran into the Blue Sunshine album. I was seriously blown away. It felt like someone reached into my dreams and put together exactly everything that was beautiful about that niche and that time. 1983. Distortion, filters, echoes, tape loops, drum machines, dark imagery, depressive elements, unique mixing/blend of contrasting elements. Every vocal sounded like it was filled with a dark sense of despair and urgency (Jeanette Landray's style especially - great fit because she mirrored Siouxsie's style in so many ways, but with a Nico-like delivery). Maybe I'm painting the album up too much or something, but "don't take my word for it...". heh.


The Glove - Like An Animal (Mp3)
The Glove - Mr. Alphabet Says (Mp3)
The Glove - Perfect Murder (Mp3)
The Glove - Mouth To Mouth (Mp3)
The Glove - Like An Animal (Mp3)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, jon:

i know nothing about starting/maintaining blogs, so i apologize in advance for what may be a dumb question....but why doesn't your blog allow readers the option of listening directly from the page? i.e., there's no "play" button next to songs on your blog. some have it and some don't. any reason why this is the case?
thanks, mark

Anonymous said...

that should have read: "some BLOGS have it and some don't".....

Jon said...

Hey Mark...good question--and one I've been thinking about myself for a little while when I preview tracks (on imeem, for example) on other blogs.

The short answer is that TVD works closely with The Hype Machine, a Mp3 aggregator which is responsible for bringing hundreds upon hundreds of people to the blog each day. Hype Machine currently scans just two filehosting services for Mp3s: XDrive and YouSendIt.

Hype Machine scans YouSendIt for the tracks TVD uploads to it each day which is subsequently updated on the HM site. Interested parties in what's posted at TVD visit TVD through HM to preview those tracks via download (...then head promptly to purchase, right?)

I think if HM were to scan the imeems (or what have you) and direct traffic to TVD, I'd be happy to offer the preview/download capability, but the daily traffic through HM is far too high to forego for now.

But blogs in general are continually a work in progress...so, who knows? If we can achieve the same level of traffic and the preview capability, I'm all for it!

Thanks for reading...