Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

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System Of A Down And Slipknot Are Set To Return This Summer,
But Should We Care?

In many ways the 21st Century festival circuit has been defined by reunions and legendary returns. The big question looming before Reading, Download, Isle Of Wight, Glastonbury, V and Sonisphere has often been, not which young band will step up, but which legendary act will return.

Of all the crazes of the past ten years the reunion, or re-live the past craze, is one of the easiest to understand. With so many mechanism with which to engage with music its unsurprising that the fans of the 21st Century have gained a great appreciation for the past, and, as we all know, there are few feelings more frustrating than that of missing out.

After all, we cannot help when we were born, nor can we magically spark a love for a band, it has to occur naturally, and for so many, it happens after the fact. Indeed, Rage Against The Machine found themselves transformed into one of the biggest bands in the world only after their retirement. They had always been popular, but in their prime, they played second fiddle, they were always the bridesmaids and never the bride at Reading Festival year after year. Yet come 2008, some eight years after their much publicized break up, they were catapulted to the top of the bill, and the headline slots have never stopped coming since.

Metal and hard rock has been affected by this craze more than other genres because, let's face it, the 21st Century hasn't been kind to metal. There have been some quite magnificent works created at the fringe, but few bands have transcended their own niches and provided those generation defining LPs that catapult you from the second stage to the top of the bill.

Five bands have tried, with varying levels of success:

  • Linkin Park: were the first, riding the nu-metal band wagon for all it was worth they combined irresistible hooks with agnsty lyrics designed to entice teenagers the world over. They were a huge success commercially, but artistically they've never shown any real merit, and, like so many of the 21st Centuries young upstarts, they've become a act of diminishing returns. Still popular, still satisfying, but sadly, still uninspired.
  • Rammstein: The German industrial rock gods set the ball rolling in the mid nineties but only really came to festival headlining prominence in the 2000s. Full of bluster and possessing one of the greatest stages shows one earth they earned the right to top the bill at Sonisphere last year, but despite their fearsomeness live show, their sonic limitations and one dimensional industrial metal bluster will always hold them back from true relevance.
  • My Chemical Romance: Catchy hooks, impeccable looks, and an army of teenage fans is always a sure root to world domination. Unfortunately for MCR they also happen to be one of the most divisive bands walking the face of the earth. The "emo" tag may be fading, but for the time being, they are too hated to provide the unifying, generation defining moments that we crave.
For better or for worse that leaves System Of A Down and Slipknot (and no, I'm not counting the Lostprophets and Audioslave failures as serious attempts at snatching the hard rock crown). Both bands peaked commercially and arguably creatively in the 21st Century; but does their return signal new hope for hard rock fans or are they simply the latest editions to the reunion circuit?

Perhaps more than any individual band the arrival of the Sonisphere festival has injected some urgency into the metal world. Now not only are their double the number of metal headline slots available, but there is genuine competition and conflict back in the metal world as the two mammoth festivals compete for our custom. This year Download has pinned their hope on System of a Down and Sonisphere has bet the house on Slipknot.


Slipknot have hardly been away, headlining Download just two years ago they finally made their long awaited step up from subs to full blown headliners. It was a historic and career defining moment for the Iowa nine piece but it was followed by an unexpected tragedy; the death of bassist Paul Gray.

Paul Gray's death threw the Slipknot off course, starting wild speculation about the band's future that was effectively ended with this morning's announcement by Sonisphere. The band, thanks in large part to Paul's death, are enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity, topicality and buzz. There is already talk that their headline slot at Sonisphere festival will be special a secial moment, but it won't.

Let us not forgot, despite their success at Download Festival, Slipknot are effectively a band on the decline. If Subliminal Verses was the perfect marriage of the band's guttural bombast and perchance of inescapable pop hooks, then All Hope Is Gone was an unimaginative side step. Full of attitude, full of hooks, but distinctly lacking in gravitas. 2008 felt like Slipknot's moment, their chance to conqueror the world, but it the end it appeared that they assumed Metal's thrown by default. Mortgaging the good will they'd earned in the past decade rather than reaching out and snatching the throne for themselves.

So now, two years later, and after two years of honest evaluation, Slipknot are still one of the biggest bands in the world with a formidable but distinctly passe live show. They have buckets of hits and now, with Paul's death, a sense of history, but essentially, they have nothing new to offer. They have effectively no reason to be on the scene, and their return to headliner Sonisphere seems cynical and flat. Metal still needs Slipknot, they are still the standard bearer, but they still aren't worth getting excited about, their the leading light among a dim bunch, and no amount of personal history can change that.

System Of A Down on the other hand have been revealed as the ace up Download's sleeve. The reunion that hard rock fans have been calling for ever since 2005, not because they missed out on System the first time, but simply because they missed them.

At the time 2005's Hypnotize and Mesmerize left fans deflated as, in the eyes of many, they compared unfavourably to System Of A Down and the hit laden Toxicity.

Yet looking back with 20/20 hindsight the double album/release of Hypnotize and Mesmerize showed a band at the top of their game attempting to seize the moment and do something special. System of a Down showed real bravery, and real ambition, marrying throwaway fun with thoughtful pointed critiques and unrivaled bombast.With a brazen confidence that boarded on nonchalance System were taking the role of scene leaders that no other band seemed capable of fulfilling.

Now, looking forward to 2011, System's is not a nostalgia trip; this is a band who are sorely needed return from a hiatus. Metal needs System to be out there; making double albums and pushing away at the boundaries of a genre that has been long absent from the mainstream and has a stale and decaying image (deserved or not).

System's 2011 return to headline Download Festival should therefore be viewed as a celebration of 21st Century metal's true leading lights; a band that are constantly challenging themselves, and constantly moving forward. They may fall flat on their faces but you can be assured that Serj and Daron will at least try, and when it comes to mainstream metal headliners in the 21st Century that's all you can really ask for.

Daft Punk Should Stop Making Albums, Immediately.
It's About Time The French Dance Deities Gave Up The Ghost, Stopped The Con,
And Stopped Releasing LPs Altogether.

Why do they bother honestly? Could there be any more pointless records than those made by Daft Punk?

A vicious cycle was created in 1997 when Daft Punk released Homewerk; an album, which despite featuring in every top 100 list of the 1990s from the mighty Pitchfork to my humble blog, was and still is utterly pointless.

2001’s Discovery would go on to be more revered, and more beloved, but it too was an exercise in wasting the world’s collective time and money.

Then Daft Punk truly gave the game away with 2005’s Human After All, a record that made no attempt to hide its sheer pointlessness

Okay, so by now you may be quite rightly perplexed, how can records that are held in such high regard be so flippantly derided. Well the answer is simply; Daft Punk don’t make good albums, they just don’t.

We’ve been going through the same process over and over and over again, and yet for some reason, the world seems to have some kind of collective amnesia when it comes to a Daft Punk album release.

So let’s review the process: Daft Punk arrive after an infuriatingly long wait at a seemingly random moment with a new album. By this point an uncontrollable wave of anticipation has developed, and the album disappoints.Homewerk and Discovery were fragmented awkward records, that didn’t flow in the slightest, staggering between moments of remarkable brilliance and uncomfortable irrelevance.

The critics of the day, doing their duty, dole out 3/5 reviews, and the music world seems strangely deflated, and thenit happens. Daft Punk decide to play live and they blow everyone away. Creating mesmeric two hour long mixes, never stopping to soak in applause, never wasting a second, always mixing, merging and layering beats, they force groups of 50,000 people to dance relentlessly, and then they stop, they stop playing and vanish for another five years, starting the cycle a new.

For others the experience is different, they don’t see Daft Punk live, instead they venture out to a club and hear the way “Da Funk” and “Aerodynamic” intertwine so brilliantly into the mix, how the tracks manage to simultaneously elide with and transcend those records that they are fortunate/unfortunate enough to be mixed with.

Then of course there are the remixes and samples. Artists as far afield as Kanye West and Rollo Tomassi will pinch and borrow Daft Punk’s inescapable beats unleashing them on a new and unprepared audience. In Kanye’s case he rode “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” all the way to the top of the charts.

Then the grand re-think occurs. Two or three years after Daft Punk depart the scene and go on another endless hiatus, those critics who once were skeptical begin to rewrite those mediocre reviews. Suddenly Homewerk becomes a five star classic, and suddenly music fans begin to speak of Daft Punk in hushed reverent tones all over again, setting themselves up for the next disappointment.

The mystery has been uncovered. Daft Punk don’t make proper LPs, and Homework, Discovery and Human After All certainly haven’t got any better, it’s just that their true purpose has been revealed. Daft Punk create collections of beats, samples and hooks, designed to layer and intermix with one another in the live arena.

Entire tracks like “Short Circuit”, “Steam Machine” and “Rollin And Scratching” exist only so that they can be reduced down to 15 samples which can seamlessly provide a segue from one hit to the next, or to beef up that final bass drop of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”.

So as critics scratch their heads and wonder why the long awaited Tron Legacy Soundtrack sounds so patchy, and while millions of fans rant in frustration “I waited five years for this!?!?!”; we should all remember that Daft Punk, whisper it, don’t make good records, they never have.

It’s time Daft Punk gave up the ghost and started releasing strings of singles and EPs and stopped getting everyones’ hopes up, because even though we should know what to expect, we can’t help but get carried away everytime a Daft Punk record is looming on the horizon.

Still thirteen years after Homework it’s hard to be mad, Daft Punk still make the best worst albums in the world, andTron Legacy is no exception.

So please Daft Punk lets have an end to disappointing faux albums and let’s have more moments like these:




Chico & Rita Review

Chico And Rita, CinemaNX’s latest animated offering, is the brain child of Oscar Winning Belle Laqoue (1993) director Frenando Trueba and revered designer and artist Javier Mariscal. The two men bonded over their love of the Cuban jazz explosion of the late 1940s and early 50s when they collaborated on Trueba’s Latin jazz documentary Calle 54. This shared passion for the sound and spirit of 50s Cuba led them to start work on a feature length animated romance that they hoped would celebrate and capture a unique moment of societal strife and creative exploration.

On these terms Treuba and Mariscal succeeded; creating a gorgeous animation full of life and energy. Mariscal’s cityscapes are simultaneously sublime and whimsical. Havana is warm and vibrant, while still maintaining a cluttered and disorganised feel. Every scene is burgeoning either with painstaking detail or loose bright splashes of colour. Chico and Rita is truly a joy to behold. A chaotic pleasure to be gleaned from these hand animated scribbling that has been sorely missing in the age of Pixar’s clean, crisp and ultimately utilitarian computer generated graphics.
You forgive Treuba indulging in cinematic clichés, as even the most tired of scenes are given new life in Marisical’s glorious world. In New York Rita stares solemnly out of her high rise apartment window; in any live action film, this overly familiar visual would be greeted with a groan, but in Chico and Rita’s world it seems new. The quirks of Mariscal’s animation captures the busy essence of New York’s skyline in a way that no video or photograph ever could.
The variety of location is one of Chico and Rita’s great strengths. We get the contrast between imperialist extravagance and the life affirming spirit of the pre-revolution ghetto in Havana; we’re invited into the ice cool underground jazz clubs of smog laden New York before we’re jetted off to smoky Parisian walkways. Each city is given its own character and its own unique quirks, but none shines as brightly, or is as intoxicating as 40s Havana.

Musically Chico and Rita is sublime. As we journey across the world’s we’re treated to the sounds of all Jazz’s greats; Dizzy Gillespie unleashes a knotted trombone solo in Paris, while Chano Pozo‘s injection of rumbling percussion into Latin jazz is captured in New York. Everyone you’d hope to see make an appearance does (Thelonious Monk, Tito Peunte, Charlie Parker, etc.), and they’re all showcased in a satisfying but complimentary way which doesn’t take away or distract from the film’s core narrative, it’s engaging love story. Surprisingly then, jazz is used best, not in Chico and Rita’s superstar showcases, but in its subtle sound tracking. Dramatic car crashes, sultry footsteps and evil glares, all are brought to life by delightful flourishes of horns and melancholic thuds of piano.

Sadly almost all the emotion in Chico and Rita comes from the instrumentation and not the films two leads. Rita is not without her charms, a typical fiery but ultimately fragile heroine; she is easy to fall for as she stumbles from one distressing situation to the next. The same cannot be said of Chico, who is quite simply the most unlikeable romantic lead in cinematic history. His every decision, action and comment is morose and self involved. What I presume were supposed to be flirtatious one liners come across as cruel, unnecessary and charmless insults. As a result it’s hard to become fully engaged in the films romance. All the strife and hardship is caused by Chico, and by the end of the film you’ll find yourself at best hoping he doesn’t get the girl, and at worst not caring.

To make matters worse Chico and Rita are never kept apart long enough to allow genuine pathos to develop. Instead they are together, then apart, then together, and then apart again, so quickly, that their romance is more dizzying than epic.

Despite this key flaw that lies at the heart of Chico and Rita’s romance, the unmistakeable sense of atmosphere emanating from the musicianship and artistry more than compensates. The passion and emotion comes from the love of music, and while the romance between the two characters never ignites; it’s hard not to be moved when Rita, full of abandon, dances with a distinct sensual intensity while Chico playfully manipulates his piano keys.

Kanye West: The Man Who Taught The World To Talk (again)

It has only been three days since the release of Kanye West fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the world’s critics and music writers are already at each others throats. The second Pitchfork doled out their first 10.00/10.00 score for a new recording since Radiohead’s Kid A the entire music world appeared sit up and take notice.


The Guardian reacted stronger than most throwing out two blogs in two days both decrying, not West’s album as such, but Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound's overwhelming positive reaction to it. Dorian Lynskey’s Guardian Music Blog really kicked the debate into the next gear when he told the world “it’s always worth pausing for breath when hyperbolic music spawns hyperbolic prose.” The reaction was predictably furious. Over two blogs and one review Kanye has already racked up a remarkable 500 comments with every expert The Guardian has to offer, from dupstep and grime lover Rosie Swash to indie Neanderthal Tim Jonze, throwing in their own two cents.


But while this largely facile debate about whether Kanye’s ...Dark Fantasy is a 10 out of 10 or a 4/5 continues, something truly special has been going on in the background. People of all persuasions, of all genres, have begun debating on and off line. From the hipster forums and pop gossip sites to your local bus stop; the arguments have been intense, underlined by great passion. What makes these debates and arguments so special is that for the first time, in what feels like an eternity, people are arguing about music on serious intellectual and emotional level.

Rather than talking about Gaga’s latest outfit or the latest in a seemingly endless array of top 100 lists, people are engaging in serious musical discussions and critical dissections. In the last week alone I’ve had huge arguments about everything from production credits to the proper use of Auto-tune. The latter, rather than being dismissed as a pop gimmick used by hated artists, is being discussed seriously. Questions have come thick and fast; when, where and how should it be used? Is Kanye just playing around with a new toy for the sake of it or is he creating a rich nightmarish landscape or his egotistic ramblings? Should he auto tune a voice choir or let their voices soar naturally? Is Auto-tune unduly hated? Is it not as credible and revolutionary to vocals as distortion, effects and sustain pedals were to guitar playing?


Elsewhere hip hop purists are waging war on seemingly everyone.; decrying Kanye’s lack of values. He raps about himself, his ego, his cars, his bitches. They argue hip hop should be about having a positive message, that it should be about storytelling and strife, and that his ridiculous self indulgence is just the latest horrid mutation in hip hop’s depressing devolution. While others, myself included, have argued that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a grandiose look into a world of excess; a glimpse into the mind of a paranoid egomaniac who despite his fame still struggles with the most basic emotions of dejection and jealously.


This is just a mere grain of sand in the Sarah Desert of a debate that this album has stirred. As, despite what Kanye’s hip hop critics may want to believe, Kanye West has transcended that genre; he sits alongside Lady Gaga as one of the world’s two biggest pop stars. And in making an album so shamelessly self centred and so shamelessly ambitious he has unified every corner of the musical spectrum in discussion on a deep level. Beyond “Ooooh...look at what she’s wearing”, or ugh...what did that dick head just say? Kanye has forced the world to listen to his record, even if their only reaction was to say; “so this is what all the fuss was about?”


For the past eleven years we’ve lived in the post-Kid A world; where creativity and innovation has flourished on fringe. Each genre has retreated into a variety of niches, where those unifying generation defining moments have been few and far between. The Arctic Monkeys briefly captured the UK’s imagination but they were too hopelessly colloquial to conqueror on the world stage. 2010 saw Arcade Fire shoot to the top of the charts with the gorgeously cathartic The Suburbs, but try starting a conversation about Win Butler and co. down you local pub and see what happens. Now Lady Gaga has had no trouble getting the world talking, and in The Fame Monster she created an album worth getting excited about, but she’s too pop, it’s not her fault of course, but try getting an Animal Collective or Gojira fan to pick up a copy, they just won’t, it’s sad, but it’s true. That’s just where we are in 2010.


Kanye West however, had no such problem. He’s been a magnet for controversy (Taylor Swift and George Bush know this better than most) and while he may be begrudged by many, few dispute that he’s unleashed four highly stylized and exciting records. Plus, deserved or not, hip hop has more credibility than pop and provokes less backlash than indie; so the audience was always ready and waiting. This is where the ambition comes in; by creating a mammoth multi-layered album, full of star studded guest spots, slick production and relatable human emotion, Kanye made something that could excite both the music critics and the world at last.


Then of course there was the hype. Dating back to the Taylor Swift incident Kanye has bombarded the world with his relentless hard sell. A one minute teaser for the King Crimson sampling “Power”, a thirty minute mini-movie proceeding the brilliant “Runaway”, the arrival of his strangely captivating twitter account and of course the GOOD Friday give aways. Kanye whipped up hype in spades, and ...Dark Fantasy delivered.


Whether My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy is a five star masterpiece or a flawed but impressive effort hardly matters. By sacrificing himself and his ludicrous ego for ridicule and by laying all his eccentricities out their in one grandiose sixty eight minute slab; Kanye taught the music world to talk again. And most importantly he taught us all to talk to each other once more. So who cares if in ten years time Kanye’s ...Dark Fantasy isn’t our generations Dark Side Of The Moon, at this specific moment in time, he’s given the world the unifying moment we’ve been lacking for what seems like an eternity.



Crystal Castles @ The Camden Roundhouse

There was a time when the prospect of a Crystal Castles gig was met more with trepidation than anticipation. When touring their debut LP in 2008 Alice Glass and Ethan Kath could hardly have been accused of being reliable. Turning up late, scrapped shows and cancelled tours became all too common. If you were lucky enough to attend one of the gigs where Alice actually managed to turn up, then there was the small matter of what condition she’d be in. Staggering on stage in near paralytic condition, fighting audience members, passing out before the show’s end and delivering performances that could kindly be described as inaudible quickly formed Crystal Castles’ modus operandi. The band soon found themselves with a powerful live mythology, for better or worse (and there were some truly great moments too), a Crystal Castles live show had become an event.

Fast forward two years and Crystal Castles find themselves in a very different place. They followed up the stylized, albeit one dimensional, 8-bit rage of their debut with the considered layered electronica of Crystal Castles II. Suddenly the buzz words for Crystal Castles were maturity and credibility. They found themselves drawing tentative comparisons to electronica’s heavy hitters The Knife & LCD Soundsystem. This was all good and well, except Crystal Castles had pitched themselves as Iggy & The Stooges of electronica. The anarchic wild child of the genre; the notion of bringing subtlety and serenity to their live shows seemed completely absurd. Therefore tonight, the first date of their UK tour, at a sold out Camden Roundhouse seems pivotal.

As soon as Alice Glass strode on stage it became clear that you were witnessing a band with renewed focus and drive. With a set list that remarkably managed to reconcile their two divergent aspirations; drawing from their two albums equally while throwing in a splattering of pre-album oldies.

The anarchy and unpredictability is still there. Alice spent almost the entire set battling her way through a heaving crowd. Bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand mic in the other she stood on audience members shoulders and crowd surfed her way through every other track. Then in a truly bizarre, you had to be there moment: she began walking across the shoulders of the front row, crotch thrusting with every step before falling headlong into one of many circle pits. Her whole performance had a ramshackle charm a bizarre marriage of seduction, primal brutality, inebriation and vulnerability.

While insanity occupied the front of stage Ethan Kath and the band delivered an incredibly tight and urgent set that satisfied on multiple levels all across the electronica spectrum. The brain dead thrills of “Doe Deer” and “Reckless” were reminiscent of a Pendulum gig giving the crowd plenty of opportunities to hurl themselves headlong into one another. At other times the set was genuinely moving (“Celestica”, “Empathy”, “Crimewave”) with the fragile cries of “When I Chose To Rest My Eyes, Coax Me, Don’t Coax” providing the kind of poignancy normally reserved solely for a Fever Ray show. The rest settled into an energetic middle ground that recalled Daft Punk at the height of their live powers.

Tonight Crystal Castles were blessed with an insatiable sold out crowd who turned the Camden Roundhouse into one giant sweaty circle pit. Alice and Ethan cannot expect to be greeted so enthusiastically every time they step on stage; yet with a show this tight and engaging Crystal Castles will not struggle to win over whichever audience is put in front of them. Tonight we were given a snap shot of a band in transition, making bold strides in the right direction, reconciling their many contradictions to put on a show that was equal parts brutality and beauty. The days of aesthetics and antics are numbered; Crystal Castles are on the fast track to art house credibility.

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This is your one stop shop of pop culture reviews I most specialize in Music, Politics & Film. I occasionally delve into TV reviews. I've got a Politics MA and a War Studies BA, I'm taking a year out before starting a Phd so when it comes to History and Politics I'm pretty well versed but I tend to keep this blog fun rather than serious.

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