Pop Songs for Edith Metzger
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
I’ll be talking with Adrian Elmer from Telafonica today about his new compilation on 4 4 2 music (I’m covering for Danny Jumpertz’s Album Show on FBI from 12 ’til 1pm).
I can’t help comparing this compilation to another that crossed my cd player recently, Groovescooter’s James Bond tribute, the latest in their Re-fashioned series, featuring loads of the usual suspects including Lake Lustre, Ollo, Alpen and Don Meers. As a basis for a commissioned compilation, James Bond is so 10 years ago. I say that with tongue in cheek, but it just seems like a strangely bankrupt starting point for a compilation now, especially since it’s been done plenty of times before, and with far more convictio. Premised on redoing Bond themes that you’ve heard a million times and aren’t really shaken too violently it’s just not memorable.
Musically 4-4-2′s compilation doesn’t stray too far afield. Drenched in nostalgia, at least to me, most of the references point to the late-’90s. Tim Koch’s contribution sounds remarkably like his work from the last decade, as does Andy Rantzen’s. The Night Owl’s tribal techno has that hazy-but-high feel of Underworld or Rolando, Nebula3 give up an indie dance feel somewhere between the Underground Lovers and something else. There’s something really melancholy at the heart of this disc and I think it’s the initial premise firing up the minds of the producers the same way it’s got my mind wondering about the way history misrepresents and the loss of clarity, resolution and how the beautiful (and ugly) three-dimensionality of life gets squashed into two dimensions in history.
Edith Metzger died in a car crash in the 1950s and is generally unremembered. Unfortunately for her, the crash which took her life was beyond her control. However, the crash itself is one of history’s more famous ones – a drunk Jackson Pollock, who was at the wheel, also lost his life. Edith Metzger was relegated to the status of footnote – a forgotten shadow of the man who took her life. Using this as the starting point, a wide variety of artists have put forth music worthy of the full melancholic tragedy of the tale. Whether upbeat, mellow or downright sad, all these tracks have an undercurrent of loss and longing.
PS listen to Join the Dots on Thursday night from 9 until 11pm for an interview with Braintax. The guy behind seminal record Birofunk and boss of the crate filling Low Life Records stable has a new album called Panorama. I had seconds to prepare for this interview and quizzed my brother who’s in a remarkably similar position to Braintax – both run labels, both write rhymes and both produce (Tim’s produced quite a lot of beats recently) – so tune in, should be interesting.
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