Le Tigre's bizarre collaboration and a musical crime

Paul F. Agusta   |  Sun, 06/28/2009 11:35 AM  |  Music

Happy Sunday, bois and grrls! It's time for that hefty helping of music news mixed with random bouts of bitchy comments that we like to call Underground Hum! Thanks again for the notes, be it on Facebook or through email. Much appreciated! Now, on to the juicy bits!

Reverb

International
It's already been five years since Le Tigre released their last album, the mediocre This Island. And since they finished touring for it, there's been little news from the New York electro-punk trio. Kathleen Hanna spent some time teaching, JD Samson has been DJing and playing live with a new band called MEN, which also includes Le Tigre bandmate Johanna Fateman. Though they insisted they were on an "extended break", all the fans pretty much assumed Le Tigre had broken up. So it's a happy surprise to learn that not only does Le Tigre still exist, but they're in the studio working with one of the biggest pop stars on Planet Earth.

Here's what we know: According to gossip maven Perez Hilton and confirmed by their publicist, Le Tigre are working with Christina Aguilera. Yes, all three of them, together. Beyond that, we know nothing about this bizarrely awesome combination. It should be mind-blowing considering their knack with beats and Christina's bombastic set of pipes. Aguilera has also been spending time in the studio with Goldfrapp, Ladytron and Siad.

As for Le Tigre, it turns out they've been tentatively reminding the world of their existence for the past couple of months. In a March 19 MySpace blog post, the band apologized for their lack of updates and had this to say: "now we are dedicated to rebuilding our relationship with our fans that we love with all of our hearts."

On April 1, Hanna made it absolutely clear Le Tigre did not break up in a blog post titled "LE TIGRE DID NOT BREAK UP".

Crowded House/Split Enz singer/songwriter Neil Finn just finished working on a sequel to his 2001 solo album 7 Worlds Collide. The new project had quite an impressive list of collaborators: Johnny Marr, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway, Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, and Pat Sansone of Wilco, and others. Finn invited this talented mob to join him in New Zealand last winter to write and record a benefit album for Oxfam International. A New Zealand documentary film crew was on hand to film the whole thing. The 7 Worlds Collide documentary, which aired on TVNZ last month, is now up on YouTube, chopped into six parts. It's about as well-made and generally pleasant as a documentary about dudes sitting around in a recording studio could possibly hope to be.

The underground hum random top 5 list

I'm a cab hopper and I often have meetings at shopping malls (like a lot of Jakartans), and when those activities are part of your life, whether you like it or not, you have to deal with the nasty side effects. Yes, I'm talking about the painful experience of being forced to listen to music you don't like or would sooner go deaf before being forced to hear the same crap again. Unfortunately, most cab drivers don't share my taste in music and neither do whoever programs those piped-in music, and yes, I'm quite aware how idiotic it is of me to expect such a thing. Anyway, I'll get to point of this rant and the theme to this installment of the Top 5 List: The pure crap posing as music that is churned out by this nation's major/mainstream record labels. It boggles the mind how bad this stuff is; when I think it couldn't possibly get more insipid, it does. So this brings me to this week's list:

The top 5 biggest musical crimes in the past decade of indonesian history (counted down for dramatic effect)

5. "Badai Pasti Berlalu", covered by Ari Lasso: this atrocity was committed in conjunction with what many considered to be a cinematic crime, which is the 2007 remake of the classic 1977 Teguh Karya film of the same name. It wasn't enough that they had to screw up the film, the masterminds behind that fiasco felt it necessary to desecrate the powerful Eros Djarot-penned, Berlian Hutauruk-sung theme sung. There was actually a point in time when I respected Ari Lasso, but his covering of this song pretty much killed it.

4. "Hantu (Hancur Hatiku)", by Olga Syahputra: There is way too much to say about this piece of crap, so I'll try to be brief. You can't really blame this song for existing, it is simply part of the increasingly disturbing trends of: A. Labels signing no-talent celebrities to record deals.

B. Labels releasing songs that consists of only one or two sentences repeated ad nausea over canned schlocky hooky pop melodies.

Even though it's basically a fashion victim, the song deserves to be on this list.

3. "Let's Dance Together", by Melly Goeslaw featuring BBB: This annoying piece of subconscious-seeping audio poison partially falls under the aforementioned no-talent celebrity trend, but the saddest part of it is that the once super-talented and original singer/songwriter Melly Goeslaw is partially responsible for this crime. I'm fully aware this was basically a publicity stunt to get the oh-so-good-looking stars of the film Bukan Bintang Biasa more airtime to promote their films, but that still doesn't excuse the song from being on this list.

2. The many, many crimes of Ahmad Dhani:Too many to mention on this list, because it doesn't extend to just a few awful songs - it also includes his seemingly never-ending desire to form or create less-than-mediocre musical acts and gimmicks to further soil the face of Indonesian music. Be it Ratu, Dewi-Dewi, The Rock, The Lucky Laki, or his continued dumbing-down of the once great Indonesian band Dewa.

1. "I Just Want to Say I love You", by Potret: the grandmother of the "let's beat one sentence to death" trends. Probably the lowest point so far in Melly Goeslaw's grand oeuvre, this song not only repeats lyrics to death, it also sounds disturbingly similar to a highly popular Japanese pop song. Oh how the mighty have sold out.

That about wraps it up for this week's Reverb. Stay tuned next week!

Meanwhile, do drop me a line at undergroundhum@yahoo.com, and if you've got a band or know of any cool bands with gigs coming up, email me the full details and I'll be sure to include it in the next Reverb.

See y'all next week!

 

Comments (1)  |   Post comment
A  |   A  |   A  |   Mail to a friend  |  Printer Friendly Version |  Digg it!  |  Add to Del.icio.us!  |  Add to Reddit!  |  Stumble it!   |  Share on facebook  

Bcs (not verified) — Tue, 06/30/2009 - 5:58am

I'm not saying that I disagree about whether those artists you choose on the top 5 musical "crimes" were fitting or not. But spare me the drama, its not as much a crime as selling imported cds for Rp 500.000 (40 - 50 USD, and they blamed pirate bay for assisting on illegal online download) . Distasteful perhaps, but just remember that it is pop music created by the major label, what do you expect? Not that they're evil or anything. Lets just see it this way, they have their market and other sort of labels have another. Doesn't necessarily what's good for one is good for another. For instance, try selling the much hailed "Teenage Deathstar" to Ahmad Dani's or BBB's crowd, and vice versa. Or Kangen band to Jeruji's raging moshpit dwellers. Ha, that'll be fun to see.

What's On

more
more
more