Apparently this CD won’t be getting a whole lot of airplay on your favorite radio station. I do remember Sole doing some cool things.

Ryan Says is a weekly column featuring pithy things that Ryan writes on tape about various records that come in to KUCR.

Real talk. I went to the MIA + Cool Kids show last Thursday. If you can’t afford the ~$30 tickets, don’t worry, I can help you recreate the experience. First, sit real close to the monitor, turn off the lights, and watch this video:

Okay, now imagine that a few hundred people are cheering and waving their hands at various climactic points in this video. That was literally the first three minutes of the MIA set: three massive monitors playing a youtube clip and people screaming and laughing in disbelief at what they were seeing.

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Who needs a guitar when cheap keyboards will do the trick? In a scene largely dominated by guitars, it’s nice to see some bands eschewing string instruments for their keyed counterparts.

No Paws No Lions waste no time crafting the catchiest, most propulsive tunes to emanate from the Riverside area with nothing more than voice, keyboard, and drums. “I’ve Always Been Content Laughing and Lying in the Fields of Banning” is easily one of the best pop songs to take place over a mere minute and a half in my memory, distilling some of the best moments of The Unicorns and fellow progenitors of equatorial funcore. If the wastelands of Banning can produce such joyous sounds as these, then maybe Stagecoach Town USA isn’t so bad after all.

Download “I’ve Always Been Content Laughing and Lying in the Fields of Banning” at No Paws Myspace page (myspace.com/nopaws) and listen in to KUCR to hear future material from these local wunderkinds.

Words to describe Prefuse 73-Hypnotic, Fractured, Complex, Cerebral, Bright, Intense, Trippy, Anxious, Whimsical and often Dreamy…

Preparations (Warp Records), the latest efforts by Prefuse 73’s Guillermo Scott Herren, contrary to the listed adjectives above, offer anything but a whimsical hipster hip-hop ride to the far off land of Intelligent Dance Music. From “East Intro”, the title track off Preparations, starts in the predictable Prefuse fashion; the MC “lyrically” introduces Prefuse 73 admist heavy glitch and broken melodies as heard on the Extinguished: Outtakes album. Does this sound familiar? It’s a hip-hop cliche and in the experimental world of Hipster Hip-Hop, cliches are either exploited or avoided. Personally, if I put on a Prefuse 73 album, I want to hear anything but cliche.

I honestly feel like it would be a waste of time to give a track-by-track explanation of why I feel like Preparations created a new meaning of the acronym IDM: Irrational Driving Music. I’ll give two examples without exhausting my critque - The track, “Girlfriend Boyfriend”, has no depth or melodic direction, while the structure is hard to define. Unfortunately, I can say the same for the rest of the album. Another track, “Let It Ring”, leaves the listener wanting more from the production. There is minor potential in some of the melodies but the beat completely destroys its effect, being drowned in an ocean of digitally altered vocal harmonies.

Has Prefuse 73 pushed the envelope as far as possible in his genre with Preparations? A few years ago his albums were the most exciting and innovative…now they sound like bad versions of Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives.