The MTDE Awards (MaHaWaM and Farrah Abraham)

[koganbot]

Dave posted this on Tumblr:

I seem to be subconsciously looking for the closest thing I can find to the vibe of “My Teenage Dream Ended” each year (last year it was Jenny Wilson's EXORCISM).

This year it appears to be Mahawam: Is an Island, which is very brief and very good.

I replied:

Dave, I just checked YouTube to find that Farrah Abraham has

Comments

Album video comment thread

[skyecaptain]

The comment thread on the most prominent unsanctioned album-length YouTube video really steers into "MTDE" as avant-garde masterpiece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyYA4byQXNk

Although one of the things I like about MTDE is that it doesn't really code as "avant garde" any more than it codes as anything else.

(Wow, I took a VERY long time to actually address your questions in that thread! I am a master filibusterer.)

Re: Album video comment thread

[koganbot]

I'm curious if you're the one who recommended 100 gecs' "money machine" to the Singles Jukebox. I suspect 100 gecs' now-and-then resemblance to Farrah Abraham is deliberate; in any event, it's when they're at their best; though they don't achieve Farrah's vocal-repetitive sense of trying to figure out her experience on the fly. Online commenters tend to cite pc music, but there are occasional mentions of Farrah.

Hand Crushed By A Mallet

Follow-up question

[koganbot]

Dave, I've got a follow-up question:

Please say more about how MaHaWaM's "Is an Island" is a spiritual heir to "My Teenage Dream Ended."

I guess that's a request, not a question.

Re: Follow-up question

[skyecaptain]

MaHaWam and 100 gecs -- I didn't recommend the latter to Jukebox though I did hear them in my Spotify playlists and immediately checked out the whole album. I like it, though it's at too much of a remove, too mannered (relatively speaking, anyway, that would be a weird word to use without Farrah Abraham as the comparison point) to get at what I mean by the spirit of MTDE. MaHaWam has some of the more important signposts even though musically he's working within a more obvious weirdo house genre -- his weirdnesses, though weird, are within the normal range of weirdness of other music. Some of it reminds me a little of a midpoint between Shamir's two albums, one a slick club-pop album produced by Nick Sylvester(!) and the other a lo-fi set of demos he recorded mostly on four-track in his bedroom, something like that

Availability

[koganbot]

You can download the tracks from My Teenage Dream Ended from Amazon at 99 cents a pop, or you can stream for free if you pay for Music Unlimited or Amazon Prime.

You can download My Teenage Dream Ended from iTunes for $9.90 or the songs individually for 99 cents.

You can stream for free on Spotify.

You can stream for free on Google Play if you pay for Google Play or YouTube Premium.

Or you can stream the whole album on the YouTube link Dave provided.

I can't find the original videos anywhere. Someone posted "The Phone Call That Changed My Life Official Video" with clips that are lifted from Enigma's awful and mawkish "Return To Innocence" (the clips don't look so bad with Farrah's tattered voice scraping the sheen off her own track's actual sadness).