I first listened to Javelin in late 2009 when they were the opening act at a rock club in the charmingly repellant Allston neighborhood of Boston. Headlining was The Very Best, a collaboration between London’s DJ duo Radioclit and Esau Mwamwaya, a vocalist hailing from Malawi. This is what they sound like. Check them out. Anyway, I had never heard of Javelin, but I remember thinking here are two groups with tough names to Google. There was a chance we’d have no electronic record of this event and it’d be lost to memory forever, solely because of peculiar search engine optimization.
Javelin is comprised of two Brooklyn-based cousins, Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford. Their set made no sense to me. Paraphrasing Zapp Brannigan, it made me feel some emotions which were weird and deeply confusing. For example, I have almost no patience for digressive noise-rock music, yet here I was enjoying an electronic duo using foot pedals somehow to create cacophony. I was drawn by the meticulous manipulation of samples and loops. Seriously, these guys were talented at what they were doing, but at the time I wasn’t totally on board. Much of the music was completely dance-y and captivating, yet I remember being put off by what sounded to me like deliberate, aggressive dissonance. And then, wait a tick, how did I wind up with their vinyl in my hand? Continue reading
Raddish Beats 