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Die Antwoord on Letterman Monday night
Now here’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d read: Die Antwoord will be joining Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the guests tonight (Monday, Feb. 6th) on The Late Show with David Letterman. Set your TiVos, you fokken chommies.
In other zef rap-rave news: Ten$ion, the second album from Ninja, Yo-Landi and DJ Hi-Tek, arrives this week in all fine record shops and e-tailers. You can stream the whole thing here, but play nice and buy that shit, because Die Antwoord turned down a million bucks from Interscope Records so they could go indie and release the weird-ass record we were all hoping for.
They’ve also got some U.S. tour dates. We’ll see you out at that LA show gettin freeky.
02.09.12 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero Theatre
02.10.12 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
02.11.12 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
02.12.12 – Washington D.C. – 930 Club
02.14.12 – Toronto, ON – The Phoenix Concert Theatre
02.15.12 – Chicago, IL – Metro
02.18.12 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
02.19.12 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom
02.20.12 – Seattle, WA – Showbox at the Market
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
02.24.12 – Los Angeles, CA – Club Nokia
02.25.12 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
*We’ve since learned that Die Antwoord apparently plan to release Ten$ion only digitally and on Flash drives because, in their words, “CDs are like motherfucking VHS.” Truth! Lies! You can buy the motherfucking CD version here.
Update: The video from their epic, unsettling performance is now live. “There’s your Super Bowl halftime show!”
New Die Antwoord track: “I Fink U Freeky”
Those hipster bastards at Pitchfork scooped us again. Today, they premiered “I Fink U Freeky,” a new track off the latest album from our favorite South African zef-rap-rave crew, Die Antwoord. “Freeky” is basically Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er’s version of a soccer techno anthem, with lots of Godzilla-sized synths and builds and breakdowns and whatnot. It’s what the Brits (and the South Africans, too?) call a huge choon, I believe. Or a right fokkin teef-grinder, innit?
Die Antwoord’s new album, TEN$ION, drops Feb. 7. Head on over to Pitchfork to hear “Freeky” and watch this space for more Die Antwoord news you can use.
Brokencyde
Today’s weird band was brought to our attention by Richard, the man behind Army of Gay Unicorns. Dude knows his weird shit, and by his account, this band Brokencyde is not only bomb-ass weird, they are, in his words, “the worst thing I have ever heard.”
A quick search around the Interwebs for all things Brokencyde reveals that Richard is not alone in his low opinion of these four neon-shirted wiggers from Albuquerque, a city that, thanks to Breaking Bad, we mostly associate with crystal meth and now, thanks to Brokencyde, we will also associate with douchey white kids drinking 40 ounces outside their parents’ McMansions. To hear the music journos tell it, Brokencyde is the worst band on the planet. Which is bullshit, of course. Everybody knows that title still belongs to Nickelback. But yeah, Brokencyde are pretty bad.
Brokencyde’s music, if you could call it that, is basically a combination of shitty club hip-hop and screamo, a mutant strain of emo that’s really, really pissed at you for thinking emo sucks. Apparently Brokencyde’s stuff is called “crunkcore,” although we’re proposing right here that it be dubbed “douchecore” instead. It’s party music, sort of, but only for those parties that are shot through with social anxiety, desperation and the threat of meth-and-alcohol-fueled violence–the kind of parties where the next day, everyone talks about who got his stomach pumped and who got his jaw broken and which girls may or may not have gotten date raped after passing out in the bath tub. It’s party music for people who are, deep down, not really in the mood to party. They’re more in the mood to break shit, up to and including themselves.
Still, it must be said that Brokencyde’s greatest artistic achievement to date, the video to their early hit “Freaxxx,” is such a perfect storm of terrible that there’s actually something kind of genius about it. With its sad little cluster of girls, trying to look hot while the “screamo” guys shriek into their faces, the random dude in the pig suit, the suburban soccer mom-ish choice of rides (Range Rovers and Jaguars? really?)…no wonder someone smarter than me called it “a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture.”
By the way, if anyone cares, Brokencyde recently released their third (!) album, the aptly titled Guilty Pleasure. Would you be surprised if I told you it’s available exclusively at Hot Topic?
[Update: To give credit where credit is due, it should be noted that while we came up with the term "douchecore" totally on our own, these guys actually thought it up first. They even specifically applied it to Brokencyde. We might have been guilty of unconscious plagiarism on this one.]
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Mission Man
Sometimes, being weird can be a lonely business. Take Gary Milholland, aka Mission Man, veteran creator of “hip-hop without ego.” For 15 years, Gary’s been toiling away in his home studio somewhere in the boonies of Ohio, cranking out album after album of his bizarre version of hip-hop, doing everything from producing and playing all the instruments to, as he proudly notes in his video bio, “booking, promotion, choreography, music video production and direction, web design, and anything else that goes into living the life of an independent musician.” Yep, when your music is as out there as Mission Man’s, you pretty much have to be a one-man operation.
The message behind Mission Man’s music–his mission, if you will–could best be summed up with the title of one of his songs: “Do What You Love.” Mission Man loves making music and he’s going to keep on making it, even if no one really “gets him.” And believe us, the subtext of the video to “Do What You Love” is clearly “nobody gets me”–it’s pretty much just an endless series of shots of Mission Man performing at various near-empty bars, probably mostly at open mics, which he travels to all over the Eastern U.S., chronicling his journeys in heartbreaking detail on his website. “I received almost no response whatsoever, though I could see one person making fun of me,” reads a typical entry. After the open mic, “I found a Wal-Mart parking lot to sleep in, instead of a rest area. It’s nice to mix things up a bit.”
Back home, Milholland supports his Mission Man habit by delivering pizzas for Papa John’s. He even wrote a song about it, called “Chillin’ at the Papa,” which is actually among his catchier numbers. If the folks at Papa John’s had any sense, they’d license the song and make Mission Man their new spokesperson. I mean, look what Jared did for Subway–and that guy can’t even rap.
Some would argue that Mission Man can’t really rap either, and it’s fair to say that his flow is, well, unconventional. His verses do actually rhyme, for the most part, but rhythmically, they’re all over the place, and Milholland delivers them in a droning, Lou Reed-like monotone. He backs this up with instrumentation–guitar, bass, keyboards and electronic drums–that’s even more unconventional than his vocal delivery. “I have never learned music theory, nor have I ever learned how to play any other musician’s music,” Milholland defiantly declares on his blog. “I just make music from my heart.”
Earlier this year, Mission Man released his latest album, liberty island. (The album and song titles are all in lowercase to “reflect the lack of ego in Mission Man’s music,” according to his press release.) Milholland says the new songs represent his growth as an instrumentalist: “I’ve been really listening to Prince and other artists I have always loved, and most of all I am more free when I’m playing.” He’s also promised to make a video for each of liberty island‘s 11 tracks. If they’re all as wackadoodle as this computer-generated clip he created for the song “wonder,” we can’t wait to see the rest of them.
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DJ Nu-Mark (and His Toys)
Lots of artists use toys as musical instruments–but the way DJ Nu-Mark does it is pretty special. I’ve been a fan of Nu-Mark ever since his days with the indie hip-hop group Jurassic 5, but I had kind of lost track of what he was up to, until someone hipped me to this video of him playing with his growing array of children’s toys. The way he samples and cross-cuts between them like they’re records and turntables has to be seen to be believed. Watch the whole thing, trust me–the best part comes at about the 4:00 minute mark. Anyone know what that toy is with the different colored cubes on it is called? Next baby shower I get invited to, I’m totally buying one.
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Imperial Stars
First off: our sincerest apologies for not posting any new content in so long. We’ve been slacking, clearly. Also, we’ve been stuck in traffic. And that part is totally the fault of these guys.
See, earlier this week, a bunch of douchebags from Orange County calling themselves Imperial Stars thought it would be cool if they promoted their new single, “Traffic Jam 101,” by…get this…causing a traffic jam! On the fucking 101 freeway! Genius, no?
To achieve this totally awesome end, the group drove a big-ass van down the 101 freeway in Hollywood during Tuesday rush hour (okay, it was 10:30 am, but this is LA, people…it’s always rush hour), then parked it sideways across three lanes of traffic, climbed on top, and started performing a little impromptu concert for all the poor suckers running late to their auditions and yoga classes. Concert ended when the cops showed up and arrested all three guys for disturbing the peace and unlawful assembley, but a really lame-ass hip-hop band from the O.C. that no one had ever heard of was all over the evening news, so hey…mission accomplished, I guess. No such thing as bad publicity and all that.
Now, obviously, one crass but effective publicity stunt does not a weird band make, so you’re probably wondering why we’re wasting precious bandwidth on these clowns. Well, there’s a few reasons. First off, there’s the band’s publicity materials, which seriously read like they were run through one of those programs that translates text into, I dunno, Slovenian or some shit, then back into English. Here’s a brief sample, from the band’s Facebook page:
“Dynamic synthesizers, authoritative drum patterns and mainstay power vocals that remind even the average ear of greatness, The Imperial Stars pierced themselves into the heart of music history…Vocalist Paul Arabella exhales igneous verse that bridge chorus potential into hit records…Imbedded into the culture of hip hop from the ages of adolescence, big Paul reinvented himself in content and persona that parallels elevated status.”
Second, there’s the band’s actual music, which almost makes the press materials seem coherent by comparison. At some point in “Traffic Jam 101,” the aforementioned Paul Arabella (who kinda looks like Andy Samberg in O.C. hip-hop drag) drops igneous verses like, “In the traffic jam, bumper to bumper/Heat for your winter, cool for your summer.” And head Imperial Christopher Wright says he “play my music for the children of the stars.” Dude, did the “children of the stars” tell you to ruin the morning of thousands of strangers?
Last but not least, there’s the alleged reason Imperial Stars decided to risk arrest so they could subject Hollywood commuters to their crappy song. They did it for the children.
“We were thinking we needed to do something big to grab the attention of the American people to this cause of the 1.5 million homeless children,” guitarist Keith Yackey told a local radio station the day after the stunt. The group claims it will donate 50% of all proceeds from sale of the “Traffic Jam 101″ single to help homeless youth.
If this is whole thing is some kind of weird Die Antwoord style meta-joke, it’s kinda brilliant. But if Imperial Stars–who, by the way, used to make incredibly derivative faux-gangsta rap under the name Imperial Assassins–are trying to be serious…and I think they are…well, then, wow. Just wow.
Links:
- Imperial Stars official site (it says you need to give them your email address to enter, but fuck that–just follow this link and you can peruse the site in all its glory)
- Imperial Stars (aka Imperial Assassins) on MySpace
- Imperial Stars Facebook fan page
Insane Clown Posse
Let’s be straight up on this one. We would’ve blogged about ICP a long time ago, but we never got around to it because, frankly, we thought they sucked. Some third-rate Beastie Boys wannabes wearing KISS makeup and rapping about serial killers? No thanks. Oh, wait, they spray their audiences with shitty midwestern soda pop? Nope, still not buying it.
But this past weekend, something kind of awesome happened: Insane Clown Posse’s fans, the Juggalos (seriously, that’s what they call themselves…we’re not clever enough to make this shit up) drove Tila fucking Tequila off the stage under a hail of beer bottles, rocks, fire crackers and supposedly even a little human feces. And while we’re glad they didn’t, like, kill her or anything, we applaud the sentiment behind the attack, which seems to boil down to something like: If you are a talentless fame whore whose best move is to show the crowd your tits, we will take you down.
This incident, which has already been described ad naseum here, here, and also here, took place at the Gathering of the Juggalos, an annual ICP-led festival that’s been happening every year since 2000 and now pulls in some scary large number of fans—over 20,000, claims the festival’s Wikipedia page, which is a lot of beer bottles. Apparently, the Juggalos also threw shit at Method Man, which somewhat undermines our theory that the attack on Tila was actually a scathing critique of reality TV culture—unless they’re confused and thought that piece-of-shit sitcom Meth did with Redman a few years back was supposed to be real. Or maybe they’re just lashing out at all purveyors of crap television. Anyone know if Tom Green got his ass kicked at the Gathering, too?
Anyway, regardless of what we think of ICP’s music—or what ICP fans think of bisexual midgets named after alcoholic beverages—we have to give Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope props for doing whatever the hell it is they do for so long…20 years and counting, which is a helluva lot of Faygo (that’s the shitty midwestern soda pop they spray on their audiences—and believe us, they spray it like they own stock in it).
It’s tough to decide what the weirdest thing is about Insane Clown Posse. Is it their music, which we guess is called horrorcore, and sounds kinda like a cross between Korn, Kid Rock, Cypress Hill and Weird Al Yankovic (and you would think that would sound awesome, except it doesn’t)? Is it their fans, the Juggalos, who proudly flaunt their Faygo and clown makeup in all sorts of goofy homemade videos and endlessly debate what it means to be part of the “Juggalo family“? Is it the fact that they run their own wrestling league? Or their crazy, over the top Halloween shows, which almost put GWAR to shame? Maybe it’s just the fact that their ringleader is a fat white dude who wears clown makeup and calls himself Violent J. God knows we’ve stuck other bands on The Weird List for less.
Eddie and I debated this one long and hard and finally came to this conclusion: Of all the crazy weird shit ICP is responsible for, nothing is weirder than the video they just released earlier this year for a song called “Miracles.” This really falls into the so-stupid-it’s-pure-genius category. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Be warned: It’ll shock your eyelids.
Links:
- Insane Clown Posse official site
- Insane Clown Posse on MySpace
- Psychopathic Records (ICP’s label)
- Gathering of the Juggalos official site
- JCW (Juggalo Championship Wrestling) official site
- JuggaloNews (fan site)
- Look At This Fucking Juggalo (not really sure what this site is, but it’s awesome)
- Violent J Is John Goodman (interesting theory/Photoshop exercise)
Sxip Shirey
(Photo by Carl Saytor)
Today’s TWBITW entry was suggested to us by one of our readers, Marc Blazel*, who turned us on to the fabulously bizarre gypsy/punk/folk/beatbox stylings of one Sxip Shirey. Sxip (we still have no idea how to pronounce that) is one of those guys who uses everyday objects as instruments and instruments as, well, objects–not necessarily a weird or original idea in and of itself, but the music he conjures up with that approach definitely exists in its own little universe.
His bio page, which also features a nifty little short film about the man and his madcap music, mentions such contraptions as “Industrial Flutes, Bullhorn Harmonicas, Regurgitated Music Box, Triple Extended Pennywhistls [sic], Miniature Hand Bell Choir, Obnoxiophone.” All of which might sound totally random and made up, but we’re pretty sure those are all actual Shirey “instruments.” We can vouch for the existence of the Industrial Flute and the Bullhorn Harmonica, at least. (We’ll get back to the Bullhorn Harmonica in a sec.)
Beyond that, we haven’t been able to suss out much about Shirey, except that he’s based in New York, has worked some with folks like author Neil Gaiman and singer-songwriter Jason Webley (one-half of another TWBITW favorite, Evelyn Evelyn), and he’s also part of a band called Luminescent Orchestrii, which as near as we can tell is sort of a Gogol Bordello for the Fringe Festival crowd. He also has a new album out called Sonic New York, which is great. Among other things, it includes a spooky Portishead-meets-Regina Spektor cover of that old disco song “Ring My Bell.” We know that sounds terrible, but trust us, it actually kinda works.
Oh, about that Bullhorn Harmonica. It’s featured, along with beatboxing and some very funky tuba, on this song called “I Live in New York City,” which as far as we’re concerned should replace that fucking played-to-death “Empire State of Mind” monstrosity as the official Big Apple anthem immediately.
*Yes, we actually have readers–and what’s even more amazing, we do sometimes take suggestions from them. Email us at weirdestbandintheworld(at)gmail.com is you have a favorite weird band you’d like to see on The Weird List. But be prepared to be mocked ruthlessly if your idea of weird is, we dunno, Bowling for Soup or some shit.
Links:
- Sxip Shirey official site
- Sxip Shirey on MySpace
- Sxip Shirey’s YouTube channel
- Sxip Shirey on CD Baby
MC Frontalot
We don’t mention hip-hop very often on TWBITW, but it’s not because Jake and I aren’t fans. We thought that last Jay-Z album was pretty dope, as the kids like to say. But there seems to be a severe shortage of truly weird hip-hop acts out there. Most stick to the formula: Drop danceable, repetitive beat; spit rhymes about how awesome you are and how much your rivals suck; attempt to sing simple pop chorus yourself or hire moderately successful R&B star to sing it for you; repeat. Hey, don’t get us wrong–when it’s good, it totally works, but there’s precious little room left for weirdness.
Enter MC Frontalot, a rapper so uniquely weird that he’s inspired the creation of his own little hip-hop sub-genre, nerdcore. See, instead of rapping about bitches and bling, Front (real name: Damian Hess) and his fellow nerdcoreans rap about Star Wars, Commodore 64′s, tech blogs, role-playing games, and other subjects near and dear to geeks’ hearts. It’s sort of like if you took Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” and built an entire genre of music around it.
Front just released his fourth album, Zero Day, earlier this year; it features tracks about actor/blogger Wil Wheaton, multiplayer online game Kingdom of Loathing, and a cameo by that geekiest of geek icons, John Hodgman (who plays the PC in those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials). If you’re wondering how anyone could possibly fill four albums with songs about such specific subject matter, you clearly have never been to Comic-Con. The nerd culture well runs deep. (It should also be noted that not every single Frontalot song is a nerd anthem; he also defends homosexuality on “I Heart Fags” and makes fun of hipster culture on “Indier Than Thou.” Mostly he writes nerd anthems, though.)
Since coining the term “nerdcore,” Frontalot has inspired a host of misfit rappers to get in on the geekiness. Other nerdcore rappers include MC Lars (sample song titles: “O.G. Original Gamer,” “White Kids Aren’t Hyphy”), MC Chris (who does some of the voices on Aqua Teen Hunger Force), and our favorite (name-wise, at least), Optimus Rhyme. There’s even not one, but two nerdcore documentaries in circulation: Nerdcore Rising and Nerdcore for Life. Because if there’s one thing nerds like almost as much as videogames and computers, it’s making documentaries about themselves (see also: The King of Kong, Wordplay, etc.)
Anyway, here’s the official video for “It Is Pitch Dark,” a track from MC Frontalot’s second album, Secrets From the Future. And if you don’t know what a grue is, all we can say is, you are clearly not an O.G. Original Gamer. Go find yourself a copy of “Zork” and recognize.
(P.S. This live version of “It Is Pitch Dark” is pretty killer, too. Watch those nerds bounce!)
Links:
- MC Frontalot official site
- MC Frontalot on MySpace (which he “despises the living shit out of”)
- Nerdcore Rising: The Movie official site
Max Normal (or, Die Antwoord v.1.0)
Of all the weird bands we’ve blogged about here on TWBITW, the one that’s gotten by far the biggest response so far is Die Antwoord, the South African “zef rap-rave crew” fronted by a scrawny, prison-tatted MC named Ninja and an even scrawnier singer/rapper/fly-girl named Yo-landi Vi$$er. Like a lot of baffled yet undeniably delighted observers, we suspected the whole thing might be a put-on, but there was something so awesome about the group’s outlandish attitude that we decided they were probably for real.
Well, it turns out we were had—sort of. Die Antwoord is actually the latest incarnation of another group called Max Normal, an earlier hip-hop crew which also featured the inimitable Ms. Visser (minus the dollar signs) and a fellow by the name of Waddy Jones, an actor/musician/artist/troublemaker who, before he created the Ninja character, fronted his Max Normal crew in a three-piece suit and (according to a band site that’s been taken down but is still viewable in archive form) performed “motivational speaking style raps” to deliver “high energy hip-hop power point presentation[s].” Quite a far cry from Die Antwoord’s ghetto fabulous approach, although judging from the above publicity photo, both groups do share the same Keith Haring-esque design aesthetic.
Waddy and co. have clearly attempted to cover their tracks: the old MaxNormal.tv website has been taken down and replaced with a deliberately primitive-looking WordPress “advertising blog” [Update: It's now been taken down altogether] ; www.waddyjones.com similarly features a very plain-envelope article directory link farm, which we’re guessing (although we can’t find an archived version) has not always been the case. Even the Max Normal Wikipedia page was just taken down yesterday—ostensibly for copyright infringement. [Update: It's since been restored and gives a very good and seemingly accurate history of the band.]
Not that we’re complaining about any of this. As the rest of the blogosphere has already widely proclaimed, what Jones and his crew are doing is so clever that an added layer of Borat-like chicanery is all just part of the fun. So enjoy this Max Normal video—which, as near as we can tell, is about two years old—and appreciate a.) how fucking versatile these guys are, and b.) how much better they’ve gotten in just a few years. If Waddy Jones doesn’t have his own HBO special by this time next year, we’ll guzzle the juice in this fish paste jar.
[Bonus factoid: the dude in Die Antwoord with progeria has been widely identified as an artist named Leon Bartha. Another zef rap-rave mystery solved!]
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