The MTDE Awards (MaHaWaM and Farrah Abraham)

[koganbot]

Dave posted this on Tumblr:

I seem to be subconsciously looking for the closest thing I can find to the vibe of “My Teenage Dream Ended” each year (last year it was Jenny Wilson's EXORCISM).

This year it appears to be Mahawam: Is an Island, which is very brief and very good.

I replied:

Dave, I just checked YouTube to find that Farrah Abraham has

Comments

Album video comment thread

[skyecaptain]

The comment thread on the most prominent unsanctioned album-length YouTube video really steers into "MTDE" as avant-garde masterpiece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyYA4byQXNk

Although one of the things I like about MTDE is that it doesn't really code as "avant garde" any more than it codes as anything else.

(Wow, I took a VERY long time to actually address your questions in that thread! I am a master filibusterer.)

Re: Album video comment thread

[koganbot]

I'm curious if you're the one who recommended 100 gecs' "money machine" to the Singles Jukebox. I suspect 100 gecs' now-and-then resemblance to Farrah Abraham is deliberate; in any event, it's when they're at their best; though they don't achieve Farrah's vocal-repetitive sense of trying to figure out her experience on the fly. Online commenters tend to cite pc music, but there are occasional mentions of Farrah.

Hand Crushed By A Mallet

Follow-up question

[koganbot]

Dave, I've got a follow-up question:

Please say more about how MaHaWaM's "Is an Island" is a spiritual heir to "My Teenage Dream Ended."

I guess that's a request, not a question.

Re: Follow-up question

[skyecaptain]

MaHaWam and 100 gecs -- I didn't recommend the latter to Jukebox though I did hear them in my Spotify playlists and immediately checked out the whole album. I like it, though it's at too much of a remove, too mannered (relatively speaking, anyway, that would be a weird word to use without Farrah Abraham as the comparison point) to get at what I mean by the spirit of MTDE. MaHaWam has some of the more important signposts even though musically he's working within a more obvious weirdo house genre -- his weirdnesses, though weird, are within the normal range of weirdness of other music. Some of it reminds me a little of a midpoint between Shamir's two albums, one a slick club-pop album produced by Nick Sylvester(!) and the other a lo-fi set of demos he recorded mostly on four-track in his bedroom, something like that

Re: Album video comment thread

[koganbot]

Thinking more about 100 gecs and Farrah Abraham: 100 gecs don't come close to the restlessness of Farrah's vocals, the way she sings in swift little darts, this brush stroke, then the next stroke, that one almost the same but a slight jolt away from the first - each thought a little scratch, leaving a mark, a counter mark, pushing as much against the rhythm as with it. Dart, another dart, breathe. Btw, this is absolutely written into her lyrics. I'm assuming her sources are teengirl poetry more than whatever people are teaching in college or acting out at slams these days*; in any event, I just spent half an hour at genius.com running through her songs, and her lyric strategies are plenty sophisticated. a line, then the next line running counter to it, or a quick modification, or a thought intruding into another thought. "My purest hell. My war starts with one... What? One / My words are few. Just don't cry - or laughter... laughter, laughter, laughter." (This I think about hearing her boyfriend was killed; I'm not sure that you can

Re: Album video comment thread

[skyecaptain]

I appreciated that interview; I think I came across it when it came out and might have even wandered back to ILM to post about it? (Can't remember.) At the time (in 2012), I figured the engineer/producer was a *student* -- I think I even Google Mapped the studio to see its proximity to the local university -- who really was putting their all into the beats and making spoken poetry fit by hook or by crook. If anything, the interview suggests *more* genuine collaboration, back and forth spitballing and matching of visions, than I had assumed, which is probably a good thing since I like to believe that all the music I like happens more or less that way, with at least some level of meaningful interaction between the different players

Re: Album video comment thread

[koganbot]

The part in "Hand Crushed By A Mallet" that pleases me in a Farrah way runs from 0:57 to 1:24, though the scratchy Farrah-like restlessness isn't provided by the singing per se but by the beats and bass intruding into the vocal stream and by the Autotune being manipulated into ripping up the vocals.

Whereas the piercing Autotune before and aft of that segment pleases me in a Jvcki Wai manner - though Jvcki's much more the rhythm virtuoso.