The Rubber Room column is a monthly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviewed material—namely 12”s, EPs, and MP3 only releases.

Courtney Love
Mono
[Free Download @ http://www.courtneylove.com/, 2003]
{1.5}

A studio synthetic buzzsaw guitar introduces an instantly forgettable ‘I ain’t going out like that’ punker anthem. No hook, too clean with poseur’s lyrics, and not being a rubbernecker fan of her pandemonium private life, I don’t really have a place at the table for Courtney if it’s only going to be for the after dinner stories of yesteryear.

When Eminem said ‘It’d be so empty’ without him he sort of had a point, when Love asks ‘Did you miss me?’ I know for sure I didn’t. I don’t think New Radicals would have any trouble kicking her ass now.
[Scott McKeating]

Ghostface Killah
Beatles
[DJj Kayslay’s Don Diva 4th Anniversary Mixtape, 2003]
{10.0}

Ghost has been building hype for about a year now by dropping freestyles, exclusives and remixes every month without fail. Exaggeratedly emoting a near hysterical narrative over a Santana lounge style instrumental of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, Ghost raises the bar for every other MC ready to drop in 2004. It doesn’t matter that this is never ever going to get sample clearance for a commercial release.

He’s ‘the Street Doctor, take your shot here’.
[Scott McKeating]

Living Ornaments
Klonten ep 3"
[Scarcelight, 2003]
{4.1}

See, the thing about pop music is production. Pop music has to sound impressive in order to work. That means that most really good pop music is created in big studios with big budgets and big-time producers. If you're creating pop music in your bedroom or in a bathroom, it'll end up sounding like a low-grade version of bigger and better produced hits. That's the problem with Living Ornaments EP. This Dutch duo obviously has a keen, atmospheric pop sensibility (think Air or instrumental Björk), but the sound quality and the production can't keep up with their ideas. The result is rather tepid pop songs that don't inspire or impress.
[Michael Heumann]

Spraggadat & Pirre
Ending 3"
[Scarcelight, 2003]
{5.5}

Scarcelight describes this 3" CDR as "new noise for a new day." Well, the first track—a real ear splitter—isn't very new; I've heard that kind of noise about a billion times before. But the other three tracks do suggest a few variations on the noise theme. "II" is a tiny, throbbing, rumbling track; it's the best on the disk, even though it's less than two minutes long. "III" is more "bleeps" and "blips" than "roars," and that's a good thing, but it goes on too long—the bleeps and blips just keep randomly shuffling about for longer than I cared to listen. "IV" employs static and buzz sounds in interesting patterns, but it, too, goes on longer than it should. All in all, the work offers a few new noises, but I wouldn't call it a new day.
[Michael Heumann]

Ultra-Red
Amnistia!
[Antiopic, 2003]
{4.6}

This single from sound artists / aural activists Ultra-Red is made from source recordings of an immigrant workers’ rights rally held in New York, May Day 2000. I’m disappointed with the final results given the wealth of sonic material that must have been gathered during a day-long rally in which the police outnumbered the participants ten to one. The first half reeks of bland microhouse with chants for amnesty peeking in now and then. The second half succeeds more as sound sculpture when the pretense of rhythm is abandoned and ambient washes coupled with random beeping provide a more interesting palette for listeners to explore. If nothing else, Ultra-Red could have delivered at least one rabble-rousing fist pumper. Immigrant workers deserve true amnesty, not the right to menial labor President Caligula has planned to give them, while listeners deserve higher evolved musical forms than Amnistia! has to offer.
[Bryan Neil Jones]

RUBBER ROOM PICK OF THE MONTH – FEBRUARY 2004

LCD Soundsystem
Yeah 12”
[DFA, 2004]
{9.4}

Unlike their peers The Rapture or The Electric Six, both of whom released their first (and to most, disappointing) discopunk LP last year and !!!, who persist in cruelly teasing their audience with unsubstantiated buzz about an upcoming full length, LCD Soundsystem remain firmly loyal to the 12” format. With a catalogue of singles, b-sides and other miscellaneous tracks that would certainly be big enough to make up a LP of satisfactory length and extremely high quality, but no plans to release a full-length in the foreseeable future, LCD Soundsystem have maintained an inconceivable amount of momentum on their singles alone while other discopunk acts have succumbed to hype or laziness.

This subject, supposedly is addressed on the a-side of LCD Soundsystem’s latest single, “Yeah,” which has been interpreted as James Murphy and co.’s call to the underground to produce an act that can take them, and to an even greater extent, LCD’s producer team and record label The DFA, on. With lyrics like “everyone keeps on listening in/nobody’s listening up,” and “everybody keeps on talking about it/nobody’s getting it done”—not to mention LCD’s previously antagonistic track record (see: breakthrough single “Losing My Edge,” the ultimate hipster diss track)—it seems likely. And the idea of a discopunk battle is a tempting one—oooh, what if !!! wrote a response track? “Me and James Murphy, 3:00, Down By the Schoolyard (a Soon-To-Be-True Story)”? Could we then hold our own indie-kid discopunk showdowns, You Got Served-style?

In reality, however, the meaning behind the lyrics of “Yeah (Crass Version)” have little to do with the enjoyment of the song. Hell, if by the 10th listen, you even care that the song has lyrics beyond “Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah….yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah,” then you’re a far more insightful person than I. Personally, I’d rather just appreciate the song as the straight dance track it was just as likely intended as, a nine and a half-minute scorcher that trumps even “Losing My Edge” as LCD’s crowning achievement.

The track starts out sounding like most other LCD tracks, with insistent, steady bass, straight disco beats, occasional keyboard flourishes, and most characteristically, the deadpan vocals of a distorted James Murphy. It’s not until Murphy (and his chorus of equally deadpan background vocalists/minions) drops out that the song really starts to get hot, however. From there, the song steadily escalates in intensity, adding flurries of cowbell and whirring keyboards that turn into laser noises that turn into screeches of static, all so gradually that you won’t realize how hard you’ve started distorting your body in chaotic punk-funk bliss until the song’s end. It’s reminiscent, in this way, of tracks like “Rock and Roll” and “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” off of Daft Punk’s Homework, songs that would place you squarely on the dancefloor and use that as a jump-off point to truly test your limits.

The b-side, “Yeah (Pretentious Version),” doesn’t blaze quite so much, and doesn’t ever demand the audience’s physical participation. Instead, it decides to be what is possibly the first ever true discopunk jam, revealing no certain agenda, opting to just get there when it does. It’s the first LCD Soundsystem song to sound like it’s being done by a band, not a solo artist, and it’s surprisingly successful. It might noodle a bit for some, but in the end, it proves itself to be just as exciting as “Yeah (Crass Version)”, providing a different sort of a thrill. You can really feel it from the band, too—at one particularly hot portion of the song, you can even hear Murphy emit an “owwwww!” or two.

Yup, another year, another great single from LCD Soundsystem. Murphy’s entourage has proven themselves as the consistent core of one of one of the underground’s most exciting movements, and they’ve done it all without the help or even anticipation of a full-length. It’s enough to get even the biggest retrophobe to dust off the old turntable and start investing in a couple 12”s from those too-cool-for-cover-art cats down at the DFA. After all, it’s only February. Wouldn’t it be nice to already own a contender for single of the year?
[Andrew Unterberger]