Xiu Xiu began in 2002 in San Jose, California by original members Jamie Stewart, Lauren Andrews, Yvonne Chen, and Cory McCulloch. Current members are Jamie Stewart, Shayna Dunkelman, Angela Seo, and Ches Smith. They are based in Los Angeles and New York. Over the life of the band, the music has taken influence from noise, modern classical, the dance floor, post punk, experimental, minimalism, Asian percussion musics and American folk music. Frequently noted as well are the influences of the films of Todd Solondz, Shohei Imamura, David Lynch and Seijun Suzuki and the books of Elfriede Jelinek, V.S, Naipaul, Yukio Mishima and Ingeborg Bachmann.
Knife Play is one of the darkest, most powerful works of art I've experienced - I can still distinctly remember the first time I listened to XX (I Broke (SJ) in my parents' house), I literally could do nothing for the rest of the day but listen to them, so I skipped classes and just listened all of their albums are interesting and engaging in different ways, and you should probably listen to all of them at least once Jamie is a fucking artist, living and breathing his art, and we're lucky to have him
well... you could take the easy route and go into Fabulous Muscles, and then branch out from there oooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... start from the beginning and grab Knife Play - then continue fwd (hint: take this route)
yeah, go with KP and if it's too abrasive, jump to Fabulous Muscles, but everything will be emotionally exhaustive, be warned
Yup perfect summary I started with Always and went straight back to KP after that and it was such a weird transition haha. Starting with KP is the way to go
Four tracks into Knife Play and liking it way more than I expected to. All my previous attempts at getting into this band were such failures. This may be the one to stick.
I think Dear God and Fab Muscles are the ones I come back to most often but I love em all outside of Angel Guts
The only song I know by Xiu Xiu is, "Don Diasco." I always thought it'd be perfect synced to a skate vid.
I go back to The Air Force a ton. It, Knife Play, and Always are probably the ones I go back to the most.
Women as Lovers is soooo underrated - such a sick album I mean Bowie's Under Pressure with Michael Gira - the stuff of legends
yeah, it's beautiful I'm gonna listen to all the XX opening songs right now and decide which one is my fav Sunday, yay!
also, I once dloaded Life and Live and fell in love with the acoustic I Broke Up... now it's lost and I can't fucking find it over the www... any ideas?
finally listened to the Twin Peaks album - amazing how cool would it be that Lynch used some of it for the new show??? oh man
I'm currently listening to Jamie Stewart drunkenly commentating Dear God I Hate Myself and I don't know why I'm doing this but it's pretty entertaining