Another mass of tabs to close (music) 1

Oh holy cow have I got music for you. I'll break it up into more consumable chunks. Some new things from known names, and I've been unpacking the Dzeko & Torres EDM mega-sampler I linked to a few weeks ago. Let's start with the new and the unusual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6V_jP0sX04&feature=youtu.be
It's been a while since I linked to anything from steampunk music idols Abney Park. The band has gone through a couple of minor line-up changes and their material has wandered through sea shanties and more circus styling both of which were OK but I didn't think they were really noteworthy. They've started releasing singles from their latest CD, titled "Nomad" and I think this is my favorite. It's got some of the good dark energy that got me into their music years ago and whoever did the production here really knows how to make Captain Robert's voice sound its best.

https://soundcloud.com/francesca-belmonte-music/francesca-belmonte-stole
Francesca Belmonte's first solo single is gorgeous. Those who recognize the production style will go "wait, doesn't she sound like..." and the answer is "yes." Belmonte has been collaborating with Tricky and he's helping produce this, her first solo effort. It's an interesting mix of minimalist sound and harmonies with a kind of chop-cut style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUHxJI7ve1M
https://soundcloud.com/benny-benassi/dance-the-pain-away-feat-john-legend-eelke-klejin-remix
Benny Benassi is another artist I haven't talked about in a while and I sort of backed into this one by accident, when I was looking for more Eelke Kleijn music after noting his track in the Bootie end-of-year best. So, back in 2013 Benassi did a track with Grammy-winning American John Legend. It's an interesting mix of Legend's powered vocals (listen for the two-octave jumps) and Benassi's signature nu disco-influenced Italian beats. Then in 2014 Eelke Kleijn picked up the baton and produced the remix at the second link. It downplays Legend's vocals in favor of a more electronica style. I'm hard-pressed to say one is better than the other; both are interesting interpretations of the material.

https://soundcloud.com/fissunix/grace-downfall
Fissunix's mixes are notable for having clever, non-standard elements. At least the ones I choose to blog. Here he's taken Placebo's breathy and minor-key cover of the Kate Bush anthem "Runnin' Up That Hill" and woven in some of the best of London Grammar's "Hey Now" vocals. If this doesn't give you chills then you might be reading the wrong music blog entries. It's like part of the score for a post-apocalyptic love story.

https://soundcloud.com/djschmollimusic/revolution
https://soundcloud.com/mashupgermany/top-of-the-pops-2014-days-and-nights
I want to close out this entry with two excellent big mash-ups from two of the best: DJ Schmolli and Mashup Germany. The Schmolli entry is a nine (or 10 if you allow for the vocal segments)-way mix promoting love and revolution. There are some of Schmolli's trademark metal accents but the track mostly rides on the rock energy of P.O.D's "Youth of the Nation".

Mashup Germany continued his reign in 2014 of being the best and most underrated masher I know. This track is his top-of-the-pops for 2014, touching 70 different hits from the past year. It's a virtuoso effort, not simply a layering of a lot of sounds over a standard dance beat. The track weaves from orchestral to dance to electronic to pop.

We are not all Charlie

minkrose posted her thoughts on speech in the wake of the criminal attacks in France. She linked to an essay that tries to explain "Why We Are Not Charlie". At the end of that essay is a quote from Teju Cole from Cole's New Yorker opinion piece. This struck such a chord with me that I want to quote it and talk about it, though I'm not sure my thoughts are entirely coherent:

[I]t is possible to defend the right to obscene and racist speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech. It is possible to approve of sacrilege without endorsing racism. And it is possible to consider Islamophobia immoral without wishing it illegal. Moments of grief neither rob us of our complexity nor absolve us of the responsibility of making distinctions.

Cole's essay points out that the treatment of Muslims in France (including in the pages of Charlie Hebdo) is far too often pervasively and systematically racist and hateful, and that the murders of satirical cartoonists is part of a complex of anti-free speech actions. Cole further notes that we chose to treat some victims of anti-free-speech acts specially. To treat this attack as a singular point is a mistake, not because any amount of racism justifies murder but because our reaction to this moment of horrible violence serves to obscure daily systematic threats to free expression (see for example the PEN Web site) that too often emanate from the very same leaders and countries we saw marching in memory of the Charlie victims.

Cole's essay also mentions a pivotal moment in my own life: the day a neo-Nazi group chose to try to stage a march through the American town of Skokie, Illinois. That town was heavily Jewish and included families of Holocaust survivors. The ACLU chose to defend the marchers' rights to assemble and express their hateful views. It was the first time I can remember having a serious adult fight with my father. I thought the ACLU was right and as Cole says:

The extreme offensiveness of the marchers, absent a particular threat of violence, was not and should not be illegal. But no sensible person takes a defense of those First Amendment rights as a defense of Nazi beliefs.

In fact my father and many others took a defense of those rights as a sign of agreement with the viewpoint of the marchers. I became a student member of the ACLU using my own money, and the topic was forbidden from discussion at my parents' house.

I cannot find words better than those others have written to condemn the murders of the cartoonists and editors at Charlie Hebdo, the hostages killed in subsequent days, and the police who attempted to defend these victims. But I am no more in sympathy with this racism and Islamophobia than I was in sympathy with the neo-Nazi's racism and anti-Semitism.