Found In Sound: 08.18.09

Currently I'm finishing 'Down and Out on Murder Mile,' by Tony O'Neill. I bought this book without knowing much about it, other than I loved the elongated design, something rarely used in fiction. It's shaped like a Zagat's essentially, and while the photo above is in red, the version I have is a piercing yellow that zapped me right into reading the dust jacket copy. A story about addiction, Tony O'Neill was formerly a member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Marc Almond's band - Marc Almond being the man who sang 'Tainted Love' with Soft Cell, one of my all time '80s pop hit favorites. Between my admiration of the book's design, and my interest in musicians and their silly lives, I was sold.

Stories about addiction are hard to tell in an original fashion, as they have been explored and excavated pretty thoroughly at this point. I wouldn't say O'Neill puts any new gloss on the narrative - male junkie marries desperate female junkie, junkie couple scores a lot of heroin, crack, coke, and methadone (at their severe peril), spiral into darkness, and are then forced to fight for their lives. If you've ever ready any Hubert Selby Jr. or William Burroughs, you get the general gist. That's not to say that O'Neill's book isn't entertaining - it's well written with a lot of energy and style, and it certainly flies by. Generous spacing and narrow pages make this the type of book you can read in a couple days.

In the end, however, it is what it is - a junkie story, and mined, I would think, quite significantly from O'Neill's personal experience. Our anti-hero is an intelligent, fiercely loyal sometimes musician who, at 24, is starting to get very concerned about the waste he's made of his life. I imagine O'Neill didn't have to dig very deep to access that mindset.

If the lesson here is 'don't do heroin, don't do crack, don't end up a slave to the methadone clinic and the attendant asshole doctor who runs it,' I'm not sure I needed to read 'Down and Out on Murder Mile' in order to learn that. At the same time, I found it diverting, energetic, and ultimately enjoyable, despite my laborious bitching above.

Take that for what you will...

jD

Found In Sound: 08.17.09

My current obsession on the techno front is the Ada mixtape record on Kompakt. Ada's first work came out on Areal records, but it looks as if she's moving up in the world, as releasing techno records on Kompakt is akin to releasing rock records on Interscope.

Based on the quality of the Mixtape album (named 'Adaptations'), she's earned the prestige bump. These 12 tracks all seamlessly flow from song to song, much like a DJ set, but the common theme here is that Ada the artist or Ada the producer is involved in some way throughout. There are Ada original tracks (like 'Lovestoned,' which also appears on the new Kompakt Total 10 collection) remixes of her own work (DJ Koze, Dee Pulse, and Michael Mayer all appear), or even Ada-produced remixes for other artists (Booka Shade, Alex Smoke and Anda Teichmann). All this put together makes for a very entertaining and compelling sixty-odd minutes of listening.

Ada sings on some of her tracks (her voice is somewhere in the Karin Dreijer-Andersson meets Annie school of Pop), while on others we get layered, playful instrumentals that resonate well beyond the dance floor. This record has accompanied me on long running jaunts, but also works well for home listening and party starting. This is definitely one of my favorite albums of the year and I give it a strong recommendation.

That's it for today - be careful out there.

jD