There Is No Soundtrack to Your Life

Altered Zones died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.

Mondo Ray

A short blast of garage punk has always been a shot in the dark.  Either your songs gets ignored and you continue to mire in obscurity or you end up a footnote in some future edition of the Nuggets collection when they finally get around to the Great Grandchildren of Nuggets, whenever that may be.  Whichever happens, you still probably don't end up famous.

But that's okay.  RAWK isn't for catty primadonnas, right?  It's about NOISE!  Well, if that's the case then Mondo Ray has it.  Here's their single "Hypnotized" which is being released on Windian Records.  You can buy it (please, buy it!) here.


MONDO RAY-HYPNOTIZED by WINDIAN RECORDS

Your Weekend Jam

Geneva Jacuzzi "Do I Sad?" (2010)

In our earlier discussion of Lana Del Rey and musical inequality, it was brought to my attention that while we mentioned certain artists we didn't actually feature them.  So this is an attempt to right that wrong.

The video here is for Geneva Jacuzzi's "Do I Sad?" which sounds like a lost '80s club hit.  Enjoy the small dose of (imagined) nostalgia.

Crystal Stilts Radiant Door EP Preview

Crystal Stilts Radiant Door EP Preview

Sacred Bones is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of independent music.  In the last year they've released stellar albums by Case Studies, Zola Jesus, and Amen Dunes, just to name a few.  Now they're prepping for a release of Crystal Stilts' Radiant Door EP.

The EP isn't a radical departure from Crystal Stilts' last album, In Love With Oblivion.  In fact, the first single off this EP, "Dark Eyes", even echoes Oblivion's "Silver Sun" with its reverence for chiming Byrds-like guitars and muffled bellows.  But where that album eventually became a bit of a chore to finish, the concise nature of an EP seems to be the perfect format for Crystal Stilts.  And even moreso than in their last album, the band dives head first into its psychedelic influences.  They opt for the Paisley Underground of 1980s Los Angeles instead of their earlier Joy Division worship setting themselves apart from an indie scene that still stubbornly has one foot planted in Ian Curtis' grave.

Highlights: "Dark Eyes", "Frost Inside the Asylum"

Lana Del Rey; Or, A Standard of Inequality

Hey, you guys.  Have you guys heard?  Lana Del Rey released a new song.  She's up to like four or five now.  That's almost enough for a full album!  Here's some Lana pics cause y'know...

Did I mention she's hot?  And she can sing!  And she dresses like a 1950s pin-up model lost in a Russ Meyer flick.  We should all love her, you guys!

Except I can't, and here's why.

For Halloween

In just a few days most of the Christian world will overlook the irony in their celebration of what originated as a pagan holiday.  Most people would look at this as an opportunity to make a playlist full of Christian Death or Bauhaus to shore up their goth cred or go for ironic covers to show their knowledge of the obscure.  Instead, we'll offer a list of songs that either captures the dark feel of the holiday directly through their subject matter or indirectly through the mood they cast.

Pop Infection Halloween Mix:
Moon Duo - "Horror Tour"
White Suns - "Skin Deep"
His Electro Blue Voice - "Duuug" 
Lightning Bolt - "Halloween III" (live)
Iceage - "Rotting Heights" 
The Men - "Night Landing"
Tombs - "Angel of Destruction"
Balaclavas - "Snake People" 
Necktarium - "The Dreamless Sun"
Psychic Ills - "I'll Follow You Through the Floor"

Your Weekend Jam(s)

Drive Soundtrack (2011)

Drive is a movie that toys with traditional ideas of male masculinity.  You have a stoic hero, macho underworld figures, and the damsel in distress, yes; but, most of these characters are shown to be ineffectual wrecks, probably because of their attempts to fit into a world they don't understand.  The underworld types are men so consumed by self-image that they constantly sabotage their own success by trying to reach for unobtainable status symbols.  Our hero is the stoic loner channeling Marlon Brando and James Dean at their most reckless as a rebel on the outside looking in at a system he very much conforms to but would like to escape.  We're later shown this is because he's a man incapable of understanding his own emotions.  He deals in extremes.  He's either a silent loner drifting through endless city streets or an uncoiled snaked striking at anything that moves.

One of the more unique aspects of the movie, and one of the many things that pulls it out of the realm of traditional action shlock, is the soundtrack.  Utilizing artists associated with France's Valerie Collective, the soundtrack falls somewhere between a detached cool and retro new wave camp.

Kavinsky (ft. Lovefoxx) "Nightcall"

Desire "Under Your Spell"

College (ft. Electric Youth) "A Real Hero"