Audio, Video, Disco

Last time I talked about the French electronic duo Justice everybody freaked out and tried to burn down R3. Well, now nobody reads this site except for Quammy and me and spammers, so it's a different time. I guess that's ok, because it's a pretty different album, too. It's... good? I vacillate between hating it a lot and thinking it's actually one of the most compelling electronic albums ever written. Don't come to me for answers, like you don't know by now.

RATING: ??%

† by Justice

Whereas many of our readers were totally grossed out or whatevs by the video for Justice's song "Stress" that I posted a couple days ago, I immediately bought the whole album after seeing it. It's pretty much everything I want out of an electronic album: great beats, interesting and unique manipulation of samples and instruments, and a real sort of furious energy buried beneath all the ones and zeros. Daft Punk, the other big French electronic duo, sometimes comes close, but I've never enjoyed a single album by them as much as I've enjoyed this one. So check out some more music by them unless you're scared of getting beaten up by awesome music after seeing the other video.

RATING: 85%

This Video

FUCK SHIT UP!

RATING: 81%

This Video

FUCK SHIT UP!

RATING: 81%

Jacques Lacan Wants to Poop on Your Chest, but He's Dead

According to Lacan (pronounced "LAKE-in"), as well as Freud, all little boys want to fuck their mommies. Fortunately, your dad jams his dick up between you and your ma, poking you out of the "mirror stage" and into the "symbolic order" with his veiny, throbbing paternal prohibition, and it's a good thing too because your mom's cooter is like a giant crocodile and your dad's phallus is a stick wedged between her "jaws," keeping them from clamping down and destroying you like how that crazy governess kills the kid at the end of The Turn of the Screw (SPOILER). And that's also (somehow) why we have letters and words, and the "true" subject is unconscious which means that none of us really "thinks," and the unconscious is structured like a language. Watch out for jouissance, which is a bit like a creepy, intellectualized orgasm, and the Real, which is the traumatic, impossible keystone of the whole anti-structure. Whatever the Christing fuck any of that's supposed to mean. The End.

RATING: Take my money, UTD%

(Lacan and Mirror Lacan from http://www.campfreudiano.es. Don't ever send your kids to Camp Freudiano.)

Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz

Written in 1830, this symphony by Berlioz might be the first time great music could be blamed on being totally fucked up on some wild shit, man. Basically it is a symphony that follows the loose "fictional" plot of an artist who wants this babe but totally can't get with her so he does a lot of opium and hallucinates that she is at this witch orgy. It's a pretty great piece, filled with a lot of bombastic moments of great pounding drums and brass, but the most famous element is the final movement, which takes place at the aforementioned orgy, go figure. Anyway, Berlioz is definitely cemented in the Romantic era of classical music, and in my opinion is the only French composer of note from that period, ie, that I like so deal with it.

RATING: 81%