Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music 3.0

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Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music 3.0

BushX - Sixteen Stone

Interscope Records: 1994/1996

This being a Canadian blog, I must call this band BushX. The Can-Con Commission is ruthless, often breaking knees over preserving our heritage, including making sure a home-grown Bush band doesn't get overshadowed by a foreign Bush band. What's funny is with the immense popularity of Gavin Rossdale's group, Roy Kenner's group got more publicity for their infringement lawsuit than any of their music garnered - from the Gen-X crowd anyway. What's even funnier is it worked, my brain still subconsciously treating this album as a BushX record, not a Bush one. This, despite the fact BushX technically no longer must be called BushX within our borders. Guess after London Bush disbanded for a while, Toronto Bush saw little need for anal-retentive clarification of whose Bush is whose.

Anyhow, Sixteen Stone. This was a ridiculously popular album back in the day, though I'm hard pressed to think of anyone admitting they throw it on anymore. It certainly hasn't aged as terribly as many other post-Nirvana grunge bands, but nor does it have the gritty charm of the original Seattle invasion. BushX sound just a little too polished with their distortion, a little too clean-cut in their angst, a little too big label produced for a supposed grassroots music scene. And yet almost no one initially wanted to sign them. Grunge from the UK? Balderdash!

Super success notwithstanding, the band has a humble beginning, Gavin and fellow guitarist Nigel Pulsford joining forces through a mutual love of Pixies. They're competent musicians, knowing their way around feedback and riffs that are heavy, dreary, and all that good grunge stuff. I dunno though, it all feels off, even to these ears that have as little exposure to the genre as a '90s teenager could hope to achieve. Matters aren’t helped when Gavin just doesn't strike me as a 'proper' grunge leading man, y'know? I cannot deny he's got stage presence, a look and voice just as impressive as Cobain's wretchedness, Scott Weiland's hot mess, and Eddie Vedder's pearly whites. Wouldn't he be better served fronting a traditional heavy alt-rock band though?

Whatever. Machinehead’s a kick-ass tune, no one can ever deny that. Most of the other songs rock well enough for a casual listen, and I’m sure almost every girl made out to Glycerine before Aerosmith stole BushX’s teen dance thunder. Hell, even Ishkur was a big enough fan to get this limited edition 2CD version with a bonus live recording included. Explain yourself there, mang.

Ishkur: “I had that? I had no idea.”

Dammit, doesn't everyone obsess over their CDs?

Honestly, I was curious to hear how disc two sounded, whether the studio polish of CD1 capably translated to stage performance. Screaming girls aside (because of course), it was pretty cool, the band sounding much looser and Gavin’s singing straining in a cool sort of way. Maybe the band realized this rougher sound served their music better, going with Steve Albini for their second album. It didn’t serve their sales though.

Filter - Short Bus

Reprise Records: 1995

It’s been a long while since I dealt with any of Ishkur’s old CDs. Okay, there’s been a scattered few that had actual ‘techno’ on it (win an Ishkur t-shirt if you guess which ones!), but nada from his pre-rave days. I bring this up because it’s the only reason why I’m reviewing Filter’s debut album today. Obviously I’d never have bought this for myself, though the possibility of it being a gift from an aunt always lingered. Seemed every guy I knew who had some hard rock or alternative rock or industrial rock collection had Short Bus in their CD pile. You couldn’t escape it, even in store shelves long after Filter had faded from public discourse. You’d spot it in ‘90s rock retrospectives, the cover art distinct and memorable. Yet, beyond one major track, does anyone recall any of the tunes off this? I sure don’t.

Yeah, yeah, not like I should know of Filter’s work, since their music scene was well outside my interest. Hear their music I did though, primarily because their brand of Nine Inch Nails metal made for ample edgy soundtrack fodder. In fact, they were tapped for the lead single off Spawn, collaborating with The Crystal Method on (Can’t You) Trip Like I Do. Right, ‘collaborating’ is used very loosely here – more like sang over an existing Crystal Method cut, but Spawn was one big ‘yawn’ anyway, amirite?

Point being, Filter’s the sort of alternative rock one easily identifies with a specific era of music. That post Trent Reznor, pre Limp Bizkit sweet spot of aggressive distortion, angst-filled singing, yet just enough strength of songcraft to take it seriously enough. Like I said, perfect for goth-inspired movies such as The Crow, Demon Knight, Valentine, The X-Files, 3000 Miles To Graceland (huh?), The Cable Guy (wait), and Little Knicky (oh come on).

Short Bus, then. I guess it’s good. Hey Man, Nice Shot, the opener tune about R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide, I most certainly have heard, because that song was on nearly every alt-metal compilation you could think of. MTV Buzz Bin, Family Values Tour 1999, Freedom Sucks Vol. 2, The Next Generation, Absolute 90’s, plus a number of those soundtracks listed above. Most of the tunes off Short Bus sound like it, some a little sludgier, some a little brisker, all heavy with distortion and shouty lyrics. I’d make a quip about how all industrial metal sounds the same, but Nine Inch Nails sounds pretty different song to song, and it’s not like ninety-percent of techno isn’t recyclable either. One thing I do like is the requisite acoustic tunes (Stuck In Here, So Cool) have a neat bit of distortion fuzz playing in the background. Like, some sort of sonic sift or sieve.

For as hopelessly ‘90s as Filter come across, they’ve managed a career lasting to this date. Good for them, I say, though one ride on the Short Bus is all I need for my Filter fix.

Various - In Trance We Trust 011: Phynn (Ishkur's Review)

In Trance We Trust: 2006

(Click here to read my original TranceCritic review)

(note: one of my ironclad rules is I will not review anything I do not have in my personal collection of music, even if I've already technically paid for it - Ishkur doesn't have such scruples though, so he pinched in to do a review of this for me. Enjoy!)


Eurotrance is like a rollercoaster. The first time, you enjoy it. You enjoy it a lot. You enjoy it so much, you go again. And again. But after a hundred times, not so much. For nearly 20 years eurotrance has inundated us with the same ride, the same coaster, the same up and down nonsense in music stores, supermarkets, elevators, hotel lobbies and every La Senza, Bebe and Hot Topic in every mall. Some people never tire of riding the same coaster. Those people have the musical sensibility of a squirrel and the insecurity of a crack whore, to the extent that they’ve created their own annual popularity contest to tell themselves how good they are at their own music. You call them every cracker-ass white dutchbag at Sensation White. We simply call them trancecrackers.

Continuing the compost crap collection of common cookie cutter cardboard cutout copycat cracker-ass compact disc compilation compositions for low countries cunts is In Trance We Trust 011, played by Phynn. I won’t say mixed because trance DJs don’t mix, they play pre-recorded music. You might recognize Phynn as the Dutch trance DJ everyone loved. No, the other one. No, the other one. No, the other one.

The In Trance We Trust series started in 1999 as a showcase of the titular sublabel of Testicle’s Black Hole Reamings, promising to bring a harder edge to Dutch eurodisney cheese, which is like promising to make your food spicier by adding mayonnaise. They’re up to 020 now, each one an annual sampler platter of the label’s milquetoast offerings, indistinguishable in form and content. And yes, that is how they number them. That means we have 977 more to go. Listening to them in succession would feel longer and more agonizing than Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt’. [you don’t know the half of it –Syk]

This mix is thoroughly unremarkable in every conceivable way. You’ve been on this rollercoaster before. There is nothing new or special here. 79 minutes of disposable, formulaic, feather-lite fluff, only 53m of which is actual trance (the other 26m are breakdowns – long, boring, annoying, non-dancing wristwatch-checking go-to-the-bar-and-get-a-drink breakdowns). For this reason I give it an objective score of 67%. It is a C-average mark. Just like Phynn’s career.

Tracks of note:

Kay Stone – Alone has one breakdown and it’s only 8 bars. That makes it a moderately decent trance song.

Mode Hookers – Breathe is a piss-poor attempt by Sander van Doorn to make farting bassline house that all the kids were into at the time.

Phynn’s own track Close Encounters runs the gamut of the stop-start nonsense that makes eurotrance so insufferable. It’s easily the worst track and also the longest. Gee Phynn, promo whore much?

Airbase – For the Fallen, a breaktrance number in the Freeland tradition, proves my theory that trancecrackers will listen to other genres but only if trance producers make them.

Phynn’s mixing: You know they have bots that can do this now, right?

Soundgarden - Down On The Upside

A & M Records: 1996

I could have skipped all these rock albums. I’m not required to review them, no overhead demanding I write about this or that. Plus, isn’t it self-defeating and counter-productive that a blog dedicated to electronic music deviates from its target field so wildly? Yes it is, but as my personal collection of music contains barely one-tenth rock, an occasional divergence into Neil Young or Yes wouldn’t hurt my overall scope. Doing so set a precedent though, and now I’m obligated to cover bands like Tool, The Offspring (soon), and Filter (way later), lest I turn hypocritical in providing preferential exposure to any music. Damn it, Ish’, why couldn’t you have discovered electronic music earlier in your life?

2014 Ishkur: You wanted the CD tower; you get my old CDs.

Right. Man, maybe I should get shelves next time. With this sort of luck, the next chap I get a tower off of will be a jazz enthusiast.

Anyhow, Soundgarden. They were a very important band coming out of the Seattle grunge scene. Many fans of the era place them on equal footing with the Big Two (Nirvana and Pearl Jam), despite not breaking through until 1994's Superunknown. Makes sense it took that long, as their first couple albums found them playing traditional forms of hard rock (punk, metal) as their Washington State peers were defining a genre and generation (however unintentional it was). That background led to a darker tone in Soundgarden’s music, Black Sabbath often getting name-dropped in comparisons. In all, it helped identify Soundgarden as a unique offering to grunge's legacy even as the scene was increasingly drowning in copycats.

The band also followed suit with other early grunge bands in quickly moving on from the genre before it grew too stale. Down On The Upside, their final album before taking a decade-plus hiatus, isn’t so heavy on angst and bleak Gen-X existence as their prior work, instead trying their hand at other forms of rock. They still allow for a couple ‘traditional’ grunge cuts like Blow Up The Outside World, but by ’96 the whole “quiet verse, loud chorus” arrangement was in serious parody mode, and I’ve no doubt Soundgarden were fully aware of it. No, ‘tis better to let inspiration and creativity flow rather than fall back on what fans undoubtedly expected of them.

And so they did. In tracks like Rhinosaur, Ty Cobb, No Attention, and Never The Machine Forever, they sound like the Led Zeppelin inspired band they were always likened to; other times they let their acoustic (Dusty, Zero Chance, Burden In My Hand) or blues (Boot Camp) interests dominate. They also experimented with odd time signatures and alternative tunings, because Wikipedia tells me so. Clearly, it’s nothing so overt that it detracts from the songcraft, unlike other hard rock bands of the time.

Down On The Upside’s a solid album, for sure. Can’t say I’ll ever listen to it again though. I’ve had my fill from alternative rock radio stations.

Various - Dance Mix 90

Quality Special Products: 1990

This… actually exists? I had no idea Dance Mix went back so far. My first exposure to the series was with Dance Mix ‘92 (a CD that changed everything for yours truly), but I’d seen a Dance Mix ‘91 on shelves too. It doesn’t even look like it belongs with the subsequent volumes, font and airbrushed cover art seemingly time-warped from the ‘50s – small surprise the inlay shows advertisements for a pile of ‘jukebox classics’ compilations. It’s doubly bizarre seeing it in a collection of CDs filled with grunge and hard rock. Hey, Teenage Ishkur, how did you come about having this?

Teenage Ishkur: This isn’t mine. I don’t listen to dance music. This looks lame and stupid.

Oh. I guess he got this later, after electronic music culture lured him away from ‘angst rawk’. Still, young Ish’ isn’t too far off in his appraisal of Dance Mix 90, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. This is an incredibly sloppy CD, with a bizarre track selection for the time and mixing that would embarrass even a rank amateur. MuchMusic's oversight for later volumes vastly improved upon the formula of DJ mixed dance-pop, such that it became a Canadian fixture larger than any Chris Sheppard compilation.

Between licensing issues and probable lack of knowledge about the scene at large, Dance Mix 90 is hardly a comprehensive collection of electronic music of that year, even at a commercial level. For sure there are big hits – Roxette’s The Look, Yaz’ Situation, and Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True - but they don’t make a lick of sense when paired alongside Depeche Mode’s Strange Love, Inner City’s Big Fun, and Soul II Soul’s Keep On Movin’ - to say nothing of the copious amounts of Stock, Aitken & Waterman productions throughout. While Dance Mix would turn the genre hopping into strength once they narrowed their scope, this first attempt comes off a mish-mash of instantly dated synth-pop and club beats.

Then there’s the ‘mixing’. Oh my God, is there ever ‘mixing’. Key clashes, shoes in the dryer phrasing, nonsensical genre blends… Dance Mix 90 is so inept at creating a flowing DJ set, it’s entertaining in spite of itself. I’ll grant the DJ mix CD was still a young concept in 1990, but this has all the production chops of utter bargain-bin toss-off. Every beatmatching attempt is hilariously forced, other times we’re treated to clashing fade-slams that aren’t even timed properly, and there’s a complete second of silence between tracks midway! I understand this was intended for the tape copy of Dance Mix 90, but you don’t allow that shit on a CD designed to be a continuous mix.

This disc’s total pants, yet I can’t help being slightly intrigued by it as well, considering the legacy Dance Mix earned during the ‘90s. Like that Beatles’ Anthology, it sheds light on the inglorious beginnings of an institution many assume was great from the start.

Stone Temple Pilots - Core

Atlantic: 1992

Of course a teenager would have a grunge album in their collection if they were a teenager in the early '90s. Wait, I never did, firmly planting my flag with 'techno' and making little concessions for other musics thereafter. I did have a single mixtape with some Nirvana on it, but that was about as obligated to the grunge scene as I ever got. Still, I have to give the former owner of these CDs credit, collecting mostly obscure grunge. No Pearl Jam, no Nirvana, no Alice In Chains, no Hole, no Smashing Pumpkins, and no Mudhoney; there is a Bush album with the lot I got though. Hey, Teenage Ishkur, why didn't you have most of the recognizable grunge bands with your CDs?

Teenage Ishkur: My older brother has them.

Oh. Well that makes sense.

Stone Temple Pilots may also be an obvious inclusion, but only if you have Purple. Carried by two of their most successful hits in Vaseline and Interstate Love Song, not to mention an iconic cover I’m sure Billy Corgan took notes on, the band’s sophomore effort has gone down as the only album by Stone Temple Pilots you’re supposed to have, even if you’re not a fan of Stone Temple Pilots. Can’t say I was much of a fan myself, always mistaking Vaseline as a song by some other grunge act. By the time I did properly notice them, it was during the promotion of their third album, Tiny Music... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop, specifically the Big Bang Baby video. With its cheesy So-Cal style, it was all kinds of silly, which I understand was the point, but 1996 Sykonee sure didn’t know that. Stone Temple Pilots thus remained with the rest of grunge on my ‘Don’t Give A Shit About’ list.

As with many things lately, I’ve reconsidered that foolhardy teenaged assumption. Their debut album, Core, is far more kick-ass than I thought it would be, and I see why this band was held in the same breath as Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Hell, with Scott Weiland really getting his Eddie Vedder on, they even sound like Pearl Jam, albeit with far heavier guitars front and centre. It’s like what Metallica might have sounded like if they’d emerged from grunge instead of thrash, a ridiculous comparison, true, but one that my limited exposure to this music made nonetheless.

When Core came out, Stone Temple Pilots were derided as bandwagon jumpers by the regular rock press, a not unfair judgement considering their early work as Mighty Joe Young was more eclectic. That said, this debut is also a competently written and strongly executed album from a group that had earned their stripes in the trenches. For that fact, Core has endured as a minor classic of the early ‘90s hard rock scene. Purple may be more essential to the casual, but if you’re gathering up grunge for your music collection, Core definitely deserves a spot on your shelves too.