SIMON CURTIS: Another Music Review

THREE THINGS turn me on about Simon Curtis. In no particular order: 1) his music is impossible to stop listening to, and if you can resist dancing to it you are stronger than I, 2) he’s got balls--releasing his first album 8Bit Heart himself for free to build up followers and his second album RA through iTunes on his very own BoyRobot Records label, and 3) he is hotter than the melting point of carbon (the highest melting point for any chemical element, for my non-nerd readers).

There is no point in telling the whole story; just Google him. In a nutshell, this Tulsa-raised singer-songwriter beat leukemia as a child and went on to perform in the national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, win Popstar Magazine’s “Get Famous” contest, write a song for Disney, and win the role of Royce Du Lac in the Nickelodeon musical Spectacular!. That’s the bio, but who cares? What really matters is the music.

To be up front, I hit Curtis in reverse order, hearing his second album before his first (what can I say, I am slightly out of touch here in Japan). RA (here), an acronym for “Robot Army” (a slightly Gaga-esque term of affection for his fans), is a brilliant album. It’s high energy pop with driving beats and surprisingly hard-edged lyrics, and a dark streak with teeth. There isn’t really a bad track on it, but for me the real stand-outs are “Flesh,” “Joshua,” “Chip in Your Head,” “Laser Guns Up,” and “Soul 4 Sale.” Having said this, after buying RA on iTunes and playing it over and over again until my iPhone begged for mercy, I went back to download 8Bit Heart and had trouble believing it was a self-produced debut album. “Delusional,” “Diablo,” and the mind-blowing “Joystick” are pieces a veteran pop star would be jealous of.

Now, I have no idea what this 26-year-old’s sexuality is, and it’s irrelevant to the quality of his music anyway, but whether or not Curtis is gay, he is certainly giving voice to things gay people can relate to. “Joystick” deviously evokes adolescent sexual discovery with a definite gay slant, “Flesh” is the flip side to Adam Lambert’s “For Your Entertainment” (and I must say, a far more daring and raw piece of song-writing). Song after song coyly flirt with a gay audience while deviously leaving themselves open to appeal to those of any gender and/or orientation. As mentioned, he does this better than Lambert and I daresay better than Gaga.

But laying aside the naughty thoughts he fills my head with, the most important thing about Curtis is the fact that he is doing it all himself. This is where I have to take my hat off to the man (if I wore one). Having a good Japanese friend who is trying to do the same thing here in Japan, and as a novelist flirting with the idea of self-publishing, part of what makes Curtis so sexy is his unflinching faith in himself, his fierce independence, and his determination to pursue his own artistic vision without selling out. His tremendous success is inspirational, and I think this is what sets him aside from any other pop act out there.

Bottom line, this guy is definitely here to stay, and as the Borg say, “resistance is futile.” So go ahead, get the “Chip in Your Head,” join the Robot Army, and stop fighting it.

GEOGADDI, a Music Review

In 1895, Robert W. Chambers published The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories about an exquisite, surrealistic play that drove all who read it to madness and corruption. Beautiful, mesmerizing, and trascendent, the work was a mask hiding a face of the most hideous evil.

A lot of people talk aboutGeogaddi the same way.

The second full album by the Scots duo, Boards of Canada, Geogaddi was the long-awaited follow-up toMusic Has the Right to Children, a record widely considered to be one of the finest pieces of electronica ever produced. With its sunny sounds and the laughing voices of children, Music evoked an aching sense of nostalgia, a bright and shiny piece of ambient delight that had fans and critics breathless in anticipation for the sequel. It took four years to produce that sequel, and the enigmatic twosome worked in virtual isolation, finally releasing Geogaddi under the most bizarre of circumstances and with little fanfare. It was premiered, simultaneously, in six churches around the world; London, New York, Tokyo, Edinburgh, Paris, and Berlin.

And that was just the start of the creepiness.

Geogaddi is one dark piece of electronica. We aren't talking "black metal" dark; no one is screaming "Satan Rules!" or talking about sex with nuns. No, Geogaddi is a hell of a lot scarier than that. If you've ever seen Rosemary's Baby, then Geogaddi is not Marilyn Manson or Cradle of Filth, it's Roman and Minnie Castevets...the sweet elderly couple next door who drug your choclate mousse so that Satan can have his way with you.

For starters, the album runs 66 minutes, 6 seconds long, and is composed of 23 tracks, two numbers with long and ominous occult pedigrees. Nor is this coincidence. The last track, "The Magic Window," is a minute and forty seconds of pure silence included just to reach these two spooky numbers. But that is only the beginning; track after track is a haunting descent into the darker regions of the psyche. The thing is loaded, loaded, with Easter Eggs and hidden occult teases. Things start tame enough, though by the second track, "Music is Math," we begin to sense something wrong. It starts pleasantly, like a warm swim in the sunshine, until the rather sinister beats and echoing voices grab you like the undertow. Then tracks like "Beware the Friendly Stranger," "Gyroscope," "1969," and "The Devil is in the Details" have their way with you. The innocuously named "Dawn Chorus" has you tapping your feet until suddenly you begin to wonder oh my god what is HAPPENING to those children??? And then there is "You Could Feel the Sky," laden with hidden references to horned gods and shouts that might have come from The Exorcist.

It is a stunning piece of composition, sublime and terrible, and people react to it in very different ways. I find it endlessly fascinating, but I once quite literally had a young woman flee a party I was playing it at. She later told me it made her skin crawl and gave her nightmares for days.

Geogaddi is a jewel, a weird and quite possibly Satanic jewel, but a jewel nevertheless. And it was also an anomaly. Boards of Canada's third album was much like the first, a nostalgic and sunny romp through delight. Geogaddi plays like something they had to get out of their system.