Centipede Hz

Music

CENTIPEDE HZ

WOAH

WOOOOOOAH HOLD

THE

PHONE PLEASE

hold it until september 2012

welcome to the NEW ANIMAL COLLECTIVE ALBUM RELEASE CYCLE.

Welcome to obsessively checking for any sort of leak, transcribing lyrics from bootlegs and trying to match up song titles to names. Welcome to getting some sort of 12-second studio sample and playing it five hundred times in a row. Welcome to staying up three consecutive days F5ing several pages due to a rumour of a leak. Welcome to optimistically downloading dozens of mediafired rar files and calling them “Centipede Hz (probably fake)”, “Centipede Hz (real)”, “Centipede Hz (actually real)”, “Centipede Hz (from mu)” etc. Welcome to trying to figure out what half of these actually are, because they sound not half bad. Welcome to waiting for even the album cover to leak, and then spamming that on /mu/. Welcome to meme season: what will be the new jam of the lifetime? What repeated lyrics will get spammed up to five hundo words?

Do people still care enough about old AnCo for this to be another big internet event? I asked the same thing when MPP was gonna come out and that still managed to be an ever-raging storm of a launch due simply to how ABSOLUTELY GOOD it was.

So is Centipede Hz gonna be that good? I certainly hope so. ODDSAC wasn’t prioritizing music entirely by any stretch and it still produced all solid tracks and a few really top tier ones – I think “Mr. Fingers” is as good a song as anything they’ve done. Down There and Tomboy are fantastic albums in my book. The Keep mixtape had Deakin suddenly jumping in as like the modern king of one of their most sacred and ancient styles.

And plus like look at the bootlegs for “A Long Time Ago” - is this now “Father Time”? That’s fantastic! Plus now they’re getting like this weird 50s pseudo-scifi forbidden transmission sorta vibe going and that is a really cool aesthetic when it isn’t just cringeworthily reflexive (and they’re not reflexive man Animal Collective gets the “lol they must be ironicweird” criticism almost as much as Sufjan and it bugs the hell out of me) and I’m really hyped up to see how it’ll translate into music.

Let’s take guesses at the tracklist for fun:

01 Moonjock – Prolly will have some sort of spacey intro with a creepy robot voice. And then it will be a jam.

02 Today's Supernatural – Slice of life sort of lyrics that might actually make me cringe if I don’t fall in love with them immediately. Really fun noisey poppy beats.

03 Rosie Oh – Swirling surrealistic jam, voice modulations like crazy near the end.

04 Applesauce – Folksy grind feels “transcendental” and “way too beautiful”. Largely Deakin-driven.

05 Wide Eyed – Intersection of the Avey Tare and Panda Bear “lovesong”. Probably about fatherhood in some capacity.

06 Father Time – Probably the same song as “A Long Time Ago”. Probably a lot of these songs have bootlegs but I’m too lazy to look into it right now. Jam of the century.

07 New Town Burnout – Almost a rock song sort of thing that follows some sort of narrative. The sort of thing I will respect but on some level always want to skip because it’s just too long or something.

08 Monkey Riches – Way too short kaleidoscope of noise that sounds like absolutely nothing that has ever been done before.

09 Mercury Man – Hearkens back to space themes on track 1. Like their “Space Oddity”, captures the “space” in music. Feels like a finale but:

10 Pulleys – The new “Banshee Beat”. Nah probably not but something light and mysterious with a very delicate sadness. Feels like it’s been meticulously constructed but is also sublimely simple.

11 Amanita – Jam of a lifetime, track of the year, feels like your brain is being wrung through a hose laced with designer-grade hallucinogens.

Other Music

Who cares there’s your AOTY.

Uh I’ve been listening to an album called Glass In My Head a whole bunch by a group that’s called either Kool Kats Klub or KKK Visions or just KKK. There’s some really crazy production on here, cloudrap by way of Blu-style breakbeat electronics. Some of the stuff is really silly, some is standard, but this one track “My Anatomy” remixed by one man name of Mel McCloud is really fantastically addictive. There’s the non-remixed version on Youtube along with some other good stuff by these guys but maybe I will upload the remix myself at some point ‘cause nothing compares, nothing at all. Something about the addictive synth loop, HUGE HUGE fuzzy bass, catchy lyrics that transition so so nicely into endgame hook loop, 4CHAN REFERENCES? (“You a roodypoo and a candyass”), and the robotification of the voice at the end hnnng.

Other playlist stuff is like:

Nekomata Master - “Beyond the Earth” - I played this a lot in ITG and now I play it a lot in foobar. Really catchy I dunno what else I can say, the “tribal”-sounding voices are especially invigorating.

Waka Flocka Flame - “Hard in the Paint (Shlohmo’s sit down remix)” - This is hella old but whatever it’s still great. Intro sounds like something out of Earthbound.

Vinne Paz vs. DMX vs. Ill Bill - “HELL” - I can’t remember where this came from but it’s pretty good. Laziest sort of mashup really, it’s just a beat from some song that I remember and don’t really like and can’t remember the name of so bun but it works and there’ s a cheesy Spiderman sample but none of that matters ‘cause when DMX starts up the verse from “Get it on the Floor” it’s like palatable hype.

Nakajima Megumi - “TRY UNITE” - This is the opening from Rinne no Lagrange. It’s really good. A few parts really remind me of the Redline sound track in the best way. And oh man when she says “MARU” again on the like, piano breakdown oh man your heart wants to stop.

Also still listening to R.A.P. Music a lot, “Southern Fried” and “Ghetto Gospel” are my favorites at the moment, mainly for the hooks. I still think this is maybe my favorite album of the year so far, it’s between this and The Money Store.

TV

Breaking Bad

Watched the first season of this, enjoying it quite a bit. It’s pretty “intense” which is the best part but also what keeps me from watching too much of it at once. It wears me out, emotionally. I need to resuscitate with moe anime. Granted I think the season starts off a lot more intense than it ends, but not by a whole lot or anything, or maybe I’ve been desensitized. Anyways yeah great show but also definitely a show. I have some beefs of various size with this but a lot of them amount to “this isn’t The Wire” and “why would they compromise artistry for mainstream acceptance!?!?” which I acknowledge already is pretty silly and I don’t know if I should even bother articulating them.

Alright well I will but let’s do the positives first. Acting great, top notch across the board. Writing really solid. Very rarely does the dialogue cross into the “uncanny valley” and usually when it does it gets more entertaining too so that’s cool. Premise is interesting and they keep it pretty simple: what if a proper chemist cooked meth? Well, why would he do that? ‘Cause he needs money for his family. Why? ‘Cause he’s dying and such. A lot of the stuff follows quite naturally. Some stuff really really doesn’t and we’ll get to that. And of course there’s the sort of implied duality of motive where Walt also wants to “prove himself” to himself or society or something, that justifies a lot of the sort of wackiness. Cast is pretty good, all compelling characters but the like, varying level of caricature to real person analog is a bit screwy. Production values through the roof, great cinematography, lots of very cool shots. Great pacing and such except for maybe some of the “family” scenes that drag a little, but they do work. But honestly all this stuff I assumed would be about this good when I started watching the show everyone keeps calling the best thing on TV today. And really I mean it could be, what do I know, I don’t watch 3dpd shows much and when they do they’re largely about “laffs”.

I did watch The Wire, and if the title and such didn’t tip you off, Breaking Bad is indeed not The Wire. No one claims it is. But I also still think it’s worse than The Wire, and a lot worse at that. And uh I don’t many people dispute that either, and when they do they usually cite the seasons I haven’t seen yet. ANYWAYS, it seems unfair to compare The Wire and Breaking Bad in most category. The Wire has better worldbuilding than Breaking Bad. Well, Breaking Bad has like... no worldbuilding whatsoever. It’s just something they decided they didn’t have to do. And they’re probably right, like, I don’t actively miss it, but if it was done properly, I’m also pretty sure it would improve the show. Same with things like, multiple conflicting viewpoints (I guess BB did this a bit with Walt sympathizing with Crazy Eight but that’s pretty limited), diegetic immersion (BB never feels real, it feels well done. The only times The Wire felt unreal is when it was “too perfect”), or like a million other things I can’t be bothered to articulate ‘cause The Wire is pretty sublime and this isn’t even about it. And yeah it seems pointless to rattle off these things that Breaking Bad doesn’t do that The Wire does. I think it’s more interesting to address the things I feel like Breaking Bad fails to do. Like:

Thematic Bridges Across Plotlines

Okay so there’s a scene in uh episode 7 that really really bugs me. The sister has this thing with stealing and such whatever, on some level I’m just uninterested but that isn’t the show’s fault really, I understand they want to flesh out these characters and having a few other plots is good for pacing. But like wait I do have a big beef here, are they really going to have intersecting plots go through a sort of revolving door sorta thing? Walter Jr. is upset or something and now he’s okay? Like we haven’t dealt with him since uh something resolved it I guess, and then Skyler worrying about Walt was resolved? And we don’t really deal with that so much. And now I guess this stealing thing will get a few episodes and just slumber. The Wire wouldn’t just forget a plot like that! And this is even more of a sin when combined with what really bugs me which is this scene.

So yeah Skyler is complaining to Walt about her sister shoplifting, and Walt uses this to transition into feeling her out about accepting money from less than legitimate sources, which of course is a huge bridge he’s gonna have to cross with his whole “leave tons of mysterious money for my family when I die” plan. So that’s okay. What bugs me is that this idea that bridging the two plots in some sort of moral or thematic way just reeks of fake depth. And as soon as you see them trying to do that the show breaks out from “a bunch of things that happen” basically an adventure sorta thing to a legitimate artistic attempt at plumbing the depth of the human element etc. Of course every show has themes that transcend the duration of the show, Breaking Bad has simple ones like “hey education can be good” or like “good people do bad things” or stuff like that, I dunno, but I feel like when they’re doing things like this, where people have to synthesize a lesson from multiple elements... I dunno, I can’t get this into words. But I feel like there’s an attempt made at another tier of legitimacy and it’s mostly been a failure I think. Not a complete failure, but things like this aforementioned attempt at synthesis between the two plots seems lazy, other stuff seems ham-fisted, it all seems glaringly arbitrary in light of the whole revolving door resolution thing... It’s like, when you “catch” them trying at stuff like this, it snaps you out of pure entertainment mode, ‘cause it’s actually asking you a question. It’s not just showing you a fantasy type adventure, it’s now saying something like “hey man but if this was REAL, what’d you think of it??”. And I gotta say I just have to laugh when I think like that.

The other immersion breaking thing: A comedy of Errors

So because of various mistakes of not being The Wire this show handles plot progression like every other TV show, which has the problem of really ruining a lot of the suspense. I’ve never been a huge fan of the idea of like, “if it’s predictable, it’s bad”, but really here it’s like the stuff that’s even the slightest bit predictable, they feel like they’re too smart to leave it predictable, so they move forward with the assumption that you predicted it and kinda make a joke out of it. What I speak of specifically is the attitude of “ha ha how will they get out of this jam?”. Or maybe more accurately, “ooh boy I can’t wait to see how they get out of this jam?” - it isn’t just humour, it’s just a sort of detachment where you know it’s TV and you know they’ll be fine, and it’s a different mindset than you have watching something like The Wire. Or even something like when certain scenes in Breaking Bad – I think specifically of the scene where Walt kills Crazy Eight – I knew Walt would survive, obviously, but I was still pretty enraptured by the struggle. Compare to like, the scene when the open house starts and they have to scramble not to be caught. Well yeah obviously the latter scene was supposed to be much more comedic. My question is why. I think it’s a lot more to do with cinematographic techniques than the actual plot content. And if they control that level of intensity, I guess I’m wondering why they ever flip the switch back. The Wire always felt “the same”, like, obviously there were comedic and lighthearted scenes, there were scenes that were shot very differently, but you were never broken out of immersion because of cinematographic work when really they could have been caught any second and there’s really nothing to laugh about. Also like when they’re robbing the facility, for another good example.

Does any of this make sense? I’m pretty tired, I don’t know if I can explain it too well. This might also contradict stuff I said in my post about Hyouka a bit ago. Wait no not really like I’m not saying they should correlate a certain emotional manipulation with certain plot events in terms of drasticness. I’m saying that the pattern of emotional manipulation they chose is invalid simply because it didn’t enrapture me as much as it could.

Other random beefs

A lot of episodes seem to have a “subversive science lesson of the day” element that strikes me as really trite. The inconsistent level of focus on plot elements is jarring e.g. some episodes spend like half the time focusing on Walt coughing or his wife worrying and some don’t at all. And I know they don’t into worldbuilding but sometimes it just seems really lame how restricted and fake the setting of the show is, a little more effort there would go a long way I think.

I dunno I’d feel weird judging this show too much after only seeing 7 episodes, I’ll write more after the next season I guess.

Anime stuff (Hyouka, Nisemonogatari, other random shows) next post ‘cause I want to get this up now before it all gets irrelevant