💌 Love Notes 001
Everything always boils down to a matter of taste.
Since Angel Pen is described as a “cyber diary of love”, I’ve decided to create a new section of this newsletter called Love Notes. This is the first installment. Hi! >ᴗ< Under this header I’ll wax on things I’m enjoying in a low pressure, casual way and (hopefully) won’t feel an internal demand to write a whole damn in-depth analytical dissection about something to the point of stagnation or burnout, as evidenced by the tumbleweeds that have been drifting by for too long on here. Let’s goooo:
Right Here, Right Now: Is there a chance for a big beat revival?
TransFX (TFX) - Biggest Baddest Beatest (2023)
I’m very hyped to have received a test pressing of Biggest Baddest Beatest, the new big beat effort by the formerly Olympia-based, soon-to-be Los Angeles-based TFX, in advance of its slated November 20 release.
In a piece published in The Guardian in 2008, Damian Harris, Skint boss and co-founder of the Big Beat Boutique club night, wrote of the subgenre, “It started as a breath of fresh air, exciting and liberating, and ended up like the loud, annoying drunken bloke you really wish would leave the party.”
Big beat is misunderstood, that’s for sure. It has fallen by the wayside as it was once known. Today, the high-octane style of big beat is commonly lampooned as music set to any footage of a hacker typing furiously on a keyboard cracking into encrypted portals thanks to The Matrix soundtrack and that “You wouldn’t steal a car” anti-piracy commercial, and the funkier offerings à la “Ooh La La” by The Wiseguys likely puts most in mind of late 90s-mid 2000s comedy film trailers with a voiceover telling us to “Meet Steve, he’s just a regular guy”.
As I see it, big beat is the missing link between electronica/sample-based music (acid house, dnb, jungle, breakbeat, hip hop) and rock. But even that definition is reductive and excludes the extent of plunderphonics and music history juxtaposed and integrated within it. It’s a style that does not take itself seriously. It is carefree, it is chaotic, it is a live wire whipping around, inviting you to test your own limits, of physicality and humility, on the dance floor. As far as sampling goes, anything and everything is up for grabs. Cha-cha, jazz, chopped up news soundbites? Chuck it all in the stew and see if people move to it. The more surprising and transformative the blend of wild and disparate sources, the better, seems to be at least one of the aims for most producers. Big beat lived loud, hard, and fast. As a result, it died young and has ultimately been dismissed as a flash in the pan.
The big 3 (Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers) spilled out of the underground and into the international mainstream where the hallmarks of the sound became commercialized, workaday and, therefore, cringe. The world moves on. Then freaks like me come along to make a case for its redemption.
Also enter Biggest Baddest Beatest in 2023.
It’s an exuberant exercise in playing with big beat’s sonic syntax. Among sundry other samples from 60s psychedelic pop to dialogue from Barbershop, Biggest Baddest Beatest is a tapestry of turn of the millennium memories. Chris McDonnell, TFX frontman, uses nostalgia as a vehicle for exploring the mainstream music landscape of the past by cutting and pasting together the ‘good parts’ of tossed-off one-hit wonders and overplayed earworms into an exciting recombinant collage. The result allows listeners to revisit those moments in music history when these tracks dominated music video blocks like TRL and infiltrated our collective consciousness on car rides to school or during mall hangs. It serves as a reminder of the emotions and memories tied to them. I’m trying not to over-intellectualize here, but I think, besides the ultimate goal of getting you to dance, the album invites reflection on the commercial aspect of music and how that affects the life cycle of a particular song—that is, how a song gets burnt out. TFX gives those songs a new place to live.
“8 Big, Bad, Beats. All recorded using the AKAI S5000 to 1/4" tape of all things. No CPU, no problems. Made with love for all of y'all. On a Fatboy tip,” read the record’s liner notes on Bandcamp. The Fatboy Slim influence on the record is heavy and BBB hits many of the intricacies Norman Cook explored in the 90s. In a true homage to Cook, McDonnell samples from some of the artists sampled on Fatboy tracks. Just as Cook lifted vocals from the Lizard King on “Sunset (Bird of Prey)”, TFX borrows the chugging guitar riff from The Doors’ “Peace Frog” on “(Workin’ That) Hard Time Floor”. As I write this, there are two singles available for streaming so far, the punchy, stuttering “The Drip” and the twangy “Good Time”, which takes American country singer Alan Jackson on an acid trip through the cowtowns of old TV westerns.
My favorite off the record is the sassy “B!tch”, a track that ingeniously samples (past Fatboy Slim collaborator) Macy Gray's "Slap a Bitch" and infuses it with a disco energy reminiscent of Basement Jaxx. A clever twist here is turning up the pitch on "She's Not There," which transforms the Zombies into a harmonious 60s girl group. Driven by a groovy bassline, it's a fun track that had me bopping around in front of my turntable. I can’t wait to play it out.
By mashing together elements of junk food radio jams, TFX invites us to rediscover the charm of the guitar melody in CrazyTown’s “Butterfly” (itself built out of a fraction of RHCP’s “Pretty Little Ditty) or the cascading scales in Coldplay’s “Clocks”. These songs may have been dismissed as disposable or annoying in their original forms, but TFX’s approach breathes new life into them beyond mechanisms for passive consumerism. Listening to BBB is like watching the competing chefs on Chopped turn random ingredients into a meal. It takes a breadth of taste and strategy to craft something both versatile and solid. Beyond the technical skill involved, the true demonstration of expertise behind a project like this is having a broad sense of musical knowledge and the context necessary to juxtapose and reappropriate elements in a way that sheds new light on a bygone era, lest it become junk food itself. Another thing, it can’t be too in love with its cleverness and obscurity, or else it risks becoming overwrought and loses the fast and loose energy of the sound’s underground roots, which is something I think TFX manages to avoid on BBB.
What do we think? Time for a big beat reappraisal? Have the beats rocked my block off? In a way, big beat is an approximate to fractal and frenetic meme video edits, nightcore remixes, and the general diverted attention landscape we currently inhabit. Could this translate to a new generation’s appreciation for the sound? Idk.
I don’t know if I can convince anyone to appreciate big beat. You have to hear it for yourself.
You can preorder Biggest Baddest Beatest here. While you’re at it, listen to Daisies and past TransFX releases!
Come and knock on our door
Speaking of big beat, Aaron and I have been watching Spaced, a show that heavily features tons of big beat and funky breakbeat tracks. Written and created by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, Spaced is a half-hour British sitcom that ran from 1999-2001. It follows two strangers, Tim and Daisy, who meet in a cafe and eventually decide to pose as a “professional couple” in order to secure a flat in London’s competitive housing market.
It’s been fun collecting tracks and IDing faves while watching. Big beat is an appropriate style to soundtrack the antics of quirked up layabout 20-somethings and the cartoonish, larger-than-life plots they are thrown into. Most of that music was being made by UK producers so it makes sense how dominant it is in a show exploring urban London living. Not to mention the music is a dynamic complement to Edgar Wright’s zippy directing and editing styles with his signature dolly zooms, extreme close-ups, whip pans, and wipes. Wright’s visual gags and references to pop culture are a cinematic analog to the sampladelic nature of big beat.
I first binged the series during a depressive state in my early twenties so I basically feel like I’m watching it again for the first time. Although, I did remember the bits about Colin the dog most. Not very far into my rewatch, but here are a few of my favorite tracks to get you sorted:
The All Seeing I - Beat Goes On
Love the stuttering loop effect on the vocal sample from Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On”.
The High Llamas - Homespin Rerun (Cornelius Remix)
Off-kilter exotica, fat 303 squelches, and the soothing sound of ocean waves. High Llamas are one of those groups that I always mean to zone further, but just never make time for. Need to rectify that. This track is remixed by Cornelius, though, and his signature sparkling chirps, space-age beeps, and time-stretched snares are all prominently featured.
Fuzz Townshend - Smash It
Madness.
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Additionally, on an Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg tip, I rewatched Shaun of the Dead, and something interesting to note is that Shaun and Ed’s flat is full of Ninja Tune posters. I found this article on DJ Food’s website that identifies and gives some context to the set dressing.
My favorite is the Funki Porcini Fast Asleep poster. See? All this electronic shit wasn’t just some niche thing, it was a MOVEMENT!
Where were you in ‘95?
Halloween has come and gone. For much of my young adult life I avoided several scary movies, but Aaron has put me on to so many horror films that I’ve become a bit of a horror film snob. At this point I’m in a position of having watched most of the classics & “good ones” that now I’m snuffling along in search of forgotten and underrated horror films like an animal hunting for crumbs in the cracks of the floorboards.
I watched a lot of new-to-me horror this season, among my favorites were Cronenberg’s Rabid, James Watkins’ The Woman in Black, James Bond III’s Def by Temptation, and Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions. The latter is what I want to bring to the table in this edition of Love Note.
This Halloween, we watched Clive Barker’s 1995 film, Lord of Illusions. Ever since I watched Hellraiser for the first time a few years ago, I’ve been meaning to read Barker’s stories. Having done so might have provided me with a bit more context for Lord of Illusions. Loosely based on Barker’s short story “The Last Illusion” and set in a place where glamor and grime collide —Los Angeles!—Lord of Illusions follows P.I. Harry D’Amour. When we meet D’Amour he’s a bit shaken up from a harrowing exorcism case, but he takes on a tax fraud case in LA thinking it’ll be a vacation. Soon enough he is thrust into supernatural conflict and danger when the guy he’s supposed to tail unwittingly leads him into a seamy, secret society of magicians, illusionists, and indiscriminate henchmen.
But D’Amour specializes in cases dealing with the occult, so not much fazes him. As I was watching, I wasn’t personally drawn in by Scott Bakula’s portrayal of a Phillip Marlowe-type character. Upon reflection, I must admit that his made-for-TV face adds to the pulp world-building of the film. Bakula’s D’Amour is somewhere between Columbo and a Jersey side character in The Sopranos. Barker deemed him perfect for the role. In any case, it’s unfair of me to compare any modern hardboiled anti-hero to Elliott Gould’s Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.
Anyway, I’m digressing. I’m not trying to focus much on the film’s story or the plot as much as I am invested in expressing my appreciation for the practice of casting Los Angeles as a robust character. It serves as an effective documentation of ideas, lifestyles, perspectives, and the physical space in a particular point in time. I am also interested in presenting a li’l thought digest based on its mise-en-scène and how it influences characterization and fleshes out the world of a film.
Barker and his production team did an excellent job at drawing out the skeevy undertones of LA. Take for instance the way Los Angeles is introduced. After accepting the case in LA, the camera pans to D’Amour’s New York apartment window. It’s a rainy day in New York. The blinds fade in over a sequence of static shots of iconic LA landscapes: palm trees lining the roads against a bright blue sky; a panoramic view of the Santa Monica Pier; a view of DTLA, smog overhead on a temperate day; an interaction with a young hotel valet driver with frosted tips. D’Amour has arrived, but not before looking up and catching sight of a billboard advertising a show by Swann (a famous illusionist/important figure he will encounter later) and remarking, “Oh, LA,” and punctuating it by donning his sunglasses.
We cut to night and land on a tight, voyeuristic shot: a saucy scene through a motel window. A naked man is dancing with two topless call girls. A smutty reality contrasting the travel brochure idealism of Los Angeles tourism. As the sequence progresses, D’Amour follows his investigation subject and descends further into the underground with a dreamlike flow.
Later in the film, there is one particular shot of the sun setting over the city where you can nearly feel the heat radiating off the screen and smell the thickness of the air. A hazy red fog hangs over and vanishes into the darkness descending upon the skyline. It’s kind of a bad trip in a good way. Oh, LA. <3
Obviously, costumes are a huge part of characterizing a film’s players but equally as important are the environments in which they inhabit. The dominant visual style in the film is describable as “whimsigoth[ic]”, a term coined by Evan Collins, architectural designer and cofounder of the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, to describe the aesthetic style of the late 80s and early 90s decor influenced by whimsical and gothic imagery and Romantic design elements. Spindly wrought-iron bannisters, ornamental brass, tarot iconography, jesters, the sun, the moon, the stars. There’s a lot of that at play in the film. It’s enchanting but also so dramatic there’s a foreboding edge to it.
Maybe it’s due to budget constraints, but everything is presented in a way that suggests the characters, especially the illusionist Swann and the cadre of magicians at the Magic Castle, are striving for sophistication. In Swann’s case, his living space demonstrates that his fortune went to his head, became a distraction, and left little room for taste. The set design choices make his world comes across chintzy, aspirationally materialistic, and reminiscent of a cheap porno backdrop. The film’s color palette is dominated by dusty, muddied jewel tones. One can look at jewel tones as the maturation of a color from its simplest state. Think of mixing colors: adding a hint of black provides depth to a hue. This can suggest a ripening, and signify sensuality, wisdom, and elegance. As with real jewels, jewel tones tend to pair well with metallics and neutrals, like the black and white checkered floor in Swann’s foyer.
A hanging sun decoration unlocked core memories of the numerous decorative sun and moon objects my mom and my aunt had in their homes in the 90s. Why was celestial imagery so popular during this time in North America? Is it really something as simple as an increase in NASA space shuttle programs inspiring collective wonder into the great beyond, or a saturation of witchy and supernatural media? I also am reminded of the glow-in-the-dark stars I’d fall asleep under on my ceiling.
It made me and Aaron long for the mystery and wonder felt in the photography of Walter Wick, famous for his elaborate collages for the I Spy book series and for designing the album art for Cocteau Twins’ Four-Calendar Café. What inspires that sense of curiosity? Maybe it’s the hazy, dreamlike quality of the spreads. Maybe it’s the sensory overload aspect. All of these bits and bobs with their tiny, intricate details divorced from their intended uses scattered about. So many items to process, identify, and categorize. What effect does it have on our minds?
It’s probably because I was only a kid, but the spiritual and occult felt more cryptic and elusive back then, even if it was super-commodified. Chalk it up to the last few years before the Internet became more accessible?
All of this to say that this style of set decoration, which I’ve previously noted in two other films released in 1995, Tom Noonan’s The Wife and Patricia Rozema’s When Night is Falling, offers us an unabashed peer into a specific sphere of Western upwardly mobile “adult contemporary” lifestyles characterized by a polished, worldly-cum-academic, and lavish interior design. I appreciate films with an attention to details like this because it can provide insights into the trends and values of a culture at a particular time and place.
I realize that this fascination and fixation is a nostalgic impulse harkening back to my childhood conception of what adulthood looked like. I can’t help it, some of these design elements fed aspirations to my developing mind. And Famke Janssen in this film is so emblematic of the handsome modern woman I thought I would mature into. See also: the woman in this old Moto Razr commercial lmao.
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This wasn’t as quick and casual as I thought it’d be. Thanks so much if you read this far. I have a huge back catalog of things to write about and post on here, including an interview I’ve yet to transcribe (out of a reluctance to listen back to my own voice and a lack of time to focus on the task) that I conducted at the beginning of this year with an absolute electronica legend and the head of one of my favorite labels. Stay tuned. I tend to feel really energized around this time of year, so hopefully I can keep up this momentum—maybe a li’l less wordy next time. Cheers! <3
this rules!!!!!
mmmmmm motorola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ApkqsWg5c