Ariel Pink, real name Ariel Rosenberg is really where the new Millennium started. Some of the albums at the top of this list (oh the anticipation!) in retrospect now seem like great end of 90's pieces. Whereas Ariel belongs squarely in the new millennium, with a whole shtick that is so post everything. Haunted by an enormous musical past which Ariel seems to have swallowed whole. Previous practitioners who borrowed from older styles, even when they are good can come off like either pastiche (Strokes, White Stripes), or wacky and ironic (Beck, Beastie Boys). Where Ariel differed was that you could hear his love for 80's indie and pop, but you never felt like he was taking the piss out of it. In fact on his first run of records he often sings and beatboxes with a passion that can be intensely moving; sometimes channeling the narcissism, self-obsession and self pity (all good things in pop life) of characters like Morrissey, Robert Smith and Elizabeth Frazer.
It's an unlikely story, Ariel a lonely outsider into all kinds of music, popular and obscure, works at record store, the Jewish son of a gastroenterologist inspired by outsider artists particularly R.Stevie Moore. Moore has released hundreds of albums with little attention to promotion or sound quality but the music itself often brilliant rock and pop deserving of a massive audience. Ariel thus embarked on his own outsider pop career and in the early 00's, alone in his room with an 8-track and a few instruments recorded hundreds of songs that he would then pass around locally on cassette. These were called Haunted Graffiti and comprised many volumes, some of which have been officially released. One of Animal Collective who were then on the rise as the new psychedelic thing was handed one of these cassettes, The Doledrums - Haunted Graffiti 2 and vowed that it would be the first release on their nascent label Paw Tracks. Ariel, although very different from Animal Collective, fitted in well, and there were similarities, both acts are psychedelic and both often look back to the innocence of childhood in their music.
The first thing you notice when listening to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti series is the super saturated sound environment; tape hiss, echo and reverb give the impression of listening through a poor radio signal, a result of the DIY equipment used. Wobbly keyboards, and what might be 80's electro beats are actually Ariel's close miked beatboxing. All the drumming is done by mouth, and lots of it is great, nothing like trad hip-hop beatboxing at all. Mick Fleetwood and Funkadelic spring to mind.
Ariel has no qualms about harsh jumps from minor verse to major key chorus, reminiscent of 1980's pop cheese like Split Enz, Flock of Seagulls or Tears For Fears, no act from the 90's would've dared try it, far too corny. Ridiculous falsettos, out of range but maximum effort given and incredibly moving.
There so much pleasure to be had from immersing yourself in this music and 10 years later it still sounds just as good. Tracks like For Kate I Wait, with the repeated yearning verse, which is never resolved, Oh she's never coming back to you, by the end when Ariel's in his room weeping and moaning, you seriously doubt whether Kate was there in the first place, just a masturbatory fantasy.
Haunted Graffiti the track itself from Doldrums has some great vocal effects akin to sound poetry, sheeeeeesh, pfffftttppph, chhhhhhhh! and is massively catchy. A whole scene called Chillwave developed as a result of this sound during the late 00's, just as shoegaze had following the innovations of MBV a decade earlier. Relatively straightforward songs are hidden beneath this new psychedelia which dismantled the song in a way which was more than just slathering distortion over everything.
Often the tracks on the Doldrums contain a fug of indulgent depression, similar to The Cure in the Seventeen Seconds era, sometimes he uses a deep robot Gary Numan voice, What does it mean if you can't see the Sun.
Songs like Let's Build A Campfire There, contain a surreal darkness beneath the childlike themes, like that scene in Twin Peaks where Ben Horne reminisces about a time he and his brother watched an older girl dance in their room, fascinated from their bunks, all through a distorted gauze of impending puberty and shaky memory.
There are two epic pieces on Doldrums and Worn Copy; The Ballad of Bobby Pyn and Trepanated Earth. You will hear expansive funk jams using mouth and organ, scissor cuts and Zappaesque misanthropic interjections, overreaching emotional outbursts, rock riffs and balladeering. Budget yacht rock and just as bitter under the surface. Both these tracks would work well as soundtracks to a really weird movie. In fact Ariel has made an attempt at a Trepanated video, but so far only an excerpt exists.
Juelz Lost His Jewels is a hair metal song about cat castration, CREDIT is a thunder funk with jangling REM guitars and Life in LA covers one of Ariel's favorite subjects the emptiness and loneliness of living in the most glamorous city in the world, down and out in Beverly Hills, and contains some great mouth trumpet.
Horror is another influence of Ariel's, particularly 80's horror movies he would have seen as a kid. Both Fright Night and Creepshow evoke zombies, werewolf's and Bronx gangs fighting in luminous socks. Sometimes he paints his face in tacky horror make up. I vividly remember films like Creepshow and the 80s Twilight Zone seemingly watched by all children at the time. Ariel himself says he was brought up by these movies and MTV as a child.
Everything in Haunted Graffiti land feels perverse, an open and mischievous sexuality.In One On One he puts himself in a spin the bottle situation, encouraging orgiastic fun. Ariel seems like the kind of guy who lost his virginity to the topless girl who gets killed first in the horror flick. Ariel's perversity has become even more apparent since with gender bending and more blatant sexual posturing.
One year at ATP festival 2011 Ariel had put together a crack band who could play these tracks successfully live, ushering in the next phase of his career which would bring success, he now used a proper studio and band, but never lost the strange haunted vibe behind his pop music. Outside the main building one night we stood next to J Mascis and his band quietly chatting, then along came a drunken young girl wearing a huge fur coat, she was looking for Ariel's chalet as apparently that's where all the best parties and drugs were that weekend. J shook his head disapprovingly.
What Ariel did next...
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