Meninblack intro

In the last month or so I have been writing about new dance music and older rock music. And it’s only today that I’ve really thought about why that is so, because at this point I’m kinda a little bored with both and with some of the newer rock I’m hearing too. Perhaps, I got up on the wrong side of the bed today. Well, my bed’s against a wall so maybe I’m getting up on the wrong side of it every day (a chorus of chimpmunk voices chimes in saying, “Yeah you do, you fucking asshole!”). Hanx for that.

New dancey stuff is getting all quiet, cosmic and contemplative, kinda like trip hop without the minor jazz chords, dodgy compilations and start up parties with an ice sculpture (San Fran circa 1999). While some of the new rock I’m hearing sounds like “we made this album with the trust fund of the singer, drummer and bass player and we’re going to do our godsdarnests to exercise our bourgeois ennui if it kills us — or gives us a nasty blister on our pinkies. Twee to say the least, and then on the electronic front there’s been a serious outbreak of balearia.

Balearia is a disease that’s contracted when you mix the eclectic dj sets of ‘80s and early ‘90s Ibiza classics with yacht rock, Italo disco and Baldelli classics, It causes you to grow a beard and speak in a quiet voice like the whispering guy out of the Old Grey Whistle Test. Advanced forms of it reportedly make you Norwegian, but you’d have to check in with the World Health Organization for more info on that.

I think it’s hilarious that Balearic has become a genre, given that it’s a style of djing where eclecticism was a prerequisite. Welcome to corporate style marketing for underground music. Which leads to me to pull out one of my old favorites and write about it, basically because I want to hear something that’s keyboardy and weird but has balls. You could always rely on The Stranglers for balls and their music is a beautiful fusion of testosterone, an excess of good drugs, Devo, Kraftwerk, The Doors, acid rock and dark sarcasm.

More on this is a bit.

Orr