Ilictronix

Thursday, 17 April 2014

To Whom It May Concern:

This is the story of how the Revolution took the approach of Youth in Revolte against a corrupt system. They did it for the kids. They did it for her good. They did it for you and me. In the end, only one will prevail. This is the story of Heart vs. The Machine.

Heartsrevolution caught my attention several years ago when I was in high school, desperately searching for more electronic and indie music to fuel my newfound insatiable appetite for out-of-the-box musicians. From childhood, I had lived in a cultural void empty of anything but The Beatles, so when I stumbled upon the Kitsune Maison Complilation series, my world turned upside down. Then not too long afterwards, I found an iHeartComix (their label at the time) smpler CD at a thrift store and once again, there was this Heartsrevolution. Who is this girl yelling at me to choose my own adventure? Where can I hear more? It's been something like five years now, but now I've got my more, and I'm quite pleased. After a training meeting at work this morning, I came home to find a bright pink package in my mailbox. Seeing as that Ride or Die, the new LP from Heartsrevolution, dropped yesterday, I knew exactly what it was.

The buttons came separately, but they were just too cool to not show.

Truly, though, I could not have been more surprised by an album preorder incentive package. I've ordered CDs and LPs in advance many times in the past, but never before have they included a coloring book, package of crayons, Pixy Stix, random Japanese candies or a card advertising their plans for a 2014 tour disguised as a Little Golden Book. In case you're not too familiar with Heartsrevolution, the band is a duo made up of 'Lo' Safai, and Ben Pollock, formed when Lo approached Ben to create a musical soundtrack for her Heartsrevolution ice cream truck. Childlike innocence, bright colors and cheerful imagery disguise a rather dark, serious and high-concept collection of songs pushing for a cultural revolution. The aforementioned Golden Book reads,

"Hello, let's be friends! This is the Heartschallenger Pop He(Art) Truck, founded by the band Heartsrevolution. It is a beacon of magic and wonder on a mission to create and revive amazement for the young and young of heart. The truck is covered in half of a million, magical Swarovski crystals passed down from the King of Pop [...]. In addition to selling band merch we also have a variety of our favorite popsicles, candy and toys."

'A beacon of magic and wonder on a mission to create and revive amazement for the young' ... just yesterday, I was reading an article on Salon about how postmodernism and irony are effectively robbing culture of having any real worth. As a friend summed it up, no one is genuinely excited or amazed by anything anymore. That's really something to think about. Are we truly amazed or excited by anything, or do we just open ourselves to culture in a sort of snarky, sure-whatever sort of way? I can honestly say I'm only interested in the new Star Wars trilogy on the grounds that it will probably be terrible and a good laugh. The only comic books I read regularly are those with self-referential humor that deconstruct their genres. This album may be one of the only things (aside from Random Access Memories) in the last 12 months I've been genuinely excited about. Maybe the revolution has a chance of destroying the machine. Maybe we can learn how to be as excited and amazed by incredible, beautiful, fun things as we were when we were just kids.

Oh yeah, and they literally mean Michael Jackson. His tour was cancelled when he died, so they bought all the glitter and fake gemstones that he'd ordered for the stage decorations at a discount and used them to decorate their ice cream truck tour bus. That they actually use to sell ice cream. And stuffed animals. I know I mentioned that in the block quote, but I need to re-emphasize just how cool that is.

But you came here for music, not my ramblings, so let's get down to it. Here's some selections from the album, including a few new takes of tracks they've released before. Oh and there's a pink crayon in the jewel case. Just pointing that out.

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Iscream Bombs

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Ride Or Die

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Kishi Kaisei

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Vertigo

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Digital Suicide

HEARTSREVOLUTION · Final Destination Feat. Esso

HEARTSREVOLUTION · We Out...

I strongly advocate picking this album up, boys and girls. Crank up the volume, dance around in your socks a little while you get ready for work/school/make dinner, hug a stuffed animal, ignore the tabloids, fuck the hype, ride or die, etc. You can stream it on Spotify and Soundcloud, and purchase it on iTunes, and from the Heartsrevolution shop. I guess there's a Kitsune edition and LP coming soon too.
Have a day full of wonder and amazement. We out...

Monday, 9 December 2013

2013, Reflections and Commentary

2013 is rapidly coming towards its end, and as this has been a very interesting year for me, I thought I'd take a few minutes for reflection. If you don't feel like reading what is by all accounts a blog post and not a music post, just skip the next few paragraphs and go for the flash players.

I really lost touch with electronic music. I can never be sure whose fault it was, really. Did I change? Did the music? Maybe I just got tired of seeing nothing but dubstep, brostep, chillstep, step step step BLOODY-FRIGGIN-STEP on every genre tag I came across. In truth, this is probably the story of two people who both changed and realized it was time to move on for each other's sake. The music I fell in love with was this happy indie-dance, electro-infused scene where rockers and ravers co-existed. 2007. 2008. Digitalism - Idealism. Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future. Does it Offend You Yeah - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into. Justice - Cross. Crystal Castles. The Kitsune Maison compilations gave me tastes of everything going on and I loved it.

#5 was really weird

This is where I'm not sure what changed. 2009 was a huge letdown for me. 2010 was a huge letdown. I just couldn't connect with anything going on culturally at any level. 2011, Justice, Digitalism and SebastiAn dropped albums and I thought it was all coming back, but it wasn't. Culture was looking for that kid I had been in 2007 with a shaggy moptop, boundless enthusiasm and a Deviantart full of Daft Punk fan art, and I just wasn't that kid anymore.

Boba, circa 2008

But now it's 2013. I've spent the last year sitting in game shops playing Magic and D&D, helping friends move and move on, listening to the radio because I'm tired of everything on my player, and becoming a comic book junkie. Somewhere in all this, I began to reconnect. A friend of mine from work was moving out, and living down the street and owning a pickup truck, that left me with the boxes and furniture to transport. Searching for some packing tape behind my seat, I found a mix CD titled simply 'Electro', and popped it into the CD player. It was a collection of tracks from the first few months of Ilictronix (for nostalgia's sake, I plan on posting this list sometime later in the holiday season), and the memories just smacked into me hardcore and I began to regain my appreciation for it all. As we were unloading stuff at her storage unit, my friend mentions that she can bring her own music to her other job, and asked me if I could make some CDs of stuff like what I'd had going in the truck. So I began hunting through my music, putting together collections of all my old favorites. I began googling some artists, happily discovering many had come out with new albums or had them in the works. So far I've seen Klaxons, La Roux, Danger and a few others are slated for probable 2014 releases, and I've heard rumors of others...

To make a long story very short, 2013 is the first year that has supplied music I've been excited about in quite awhile. Granted, I'm not quite the underground-exclusive guy I used to be and Imagine Dragons and Capital Cities are mainstays on my playlists, but it's something. It feels like it felt back in 2008 when I first picked up Idealism and listened to Pogo for the first time.

Insert stock music photgraphy here