Welcome! This is my project to finally listen to all of the songs in my library and stop being a punk. Hopefully we can find some good, interesting music. Well, at least interesting music.
Things began with the strangest sequence of artists yet: The Fiery Furnaces to Biz Markie, Bjork to The Dandy Warhols to Jay-Z, then a lone Kronos Quartet prelude to Depeche Mode. This slid me into the "black" albums that I have, including two simply called The Black Album (looks at Jay and Dandy), and Black Market Clash, among others. Try out Lucifer below:
I found Lucifer quite appealing. As some well-padded, 20-something, white, college guy, I'm not going to attempt any pretense of intelligent discussion about the content of this song. I will say I think it sounds awesome. There's some really effective atonal counterpoint about two-thirds of the way through the song, where he starts singing over the female lead.
Moving on, I thought I had already gotten my fill of Muse, especially in the pretentious waters of a post-The Resistance milieu. However, it would seem that I skipped over this little gem from Black Holes and Revelations, called Assassin:
The brutal opening sets the song off to a blistering pace, a violent tarantella exploding in full instrumentation. What's neat is the way they weave together a standard call/response structure over the top of this without deadening the intensity of the instrumentation. I'm sure somewhere in the lyrics Muse actually gets to making the title of the song relevant, but of course that's not why I enjoyed it. It seems to be a terrible struggle for any band - often the enjoyment from their work has nothing to do with the lyrical content so much as the tone and feel. However, people rarely go crazy for just pure instrumental work, or for wordless music. Their songs need the words even though no one listens to the words themselves. They listen only to the fact of the song having words.
I've been keeping myself pretty busy these past few days, juggling an installation piece (which went quite well, and I'll put the results online soon), my internship, a branding project, my first adventure into tumblr, and I started reading Ulysses for the first time (pro tip: no what the hell an omphalos is).
And in the midst of all this frenetic activity I was pushed and pulled by Gary Schyman's score work for Bioshock and Bioshock 2. For those who "aren't into games," the Bioshock games have explored the consequences of an objectivist society according to the precepts of Ayn Rand in the marvelous fictional city of Rapture. While accurate, that description utterly fails in capturing the faded, glorious allure of running through the ghosts of man's aspiration frozen as architecture. Instead of geeking out about his aggressive use of dissonance and atonal composition techniques, I'll simply say that he made some very compelling music.
Apart from my journey under the sea I enjoyed som XTC, Hiromi, and something called The Bird & The Bee. They're a technically-oriented indie pop duo, building up thick vocal harmonies over jazzy chord progressions that consistently twist and bend in ways you're not quite expecting. For the most part their lyrics sucked ass, with pieces that bemused me in their obviousness such as Again & Again and Fucking Boyfriend. However, the music was slick enough that I found myself still humming along, only to curse when I had discovered they had gotten me again. I'll be interested to see where they go, because I think their overall sound is pretty swank.
After that light-hearted frolic, I got slammed by the tandem titans of Jaco Pastorious and Miles Davis. And not just any Miles Davis, but Bitches Brew Miles Davis. The album that, excepting one four and a half minute piece, contains no jams shorter than eleven minutes. Sadly, this project of mine has nudged me begrudgingly toward the direction of not liking jazz as much. I enjoy long form work. If you make something that's a good solid hour of music, I won't condemn it for its length. However, I just can't process that much codified improvisation at once (which is what jazz is - ad lib within a specific contextualization). I did get a quaint little surprise, though:
The schizophrenic weather around here is really getting me down. I'm pro-snow, so the rain is just miserable, both because its freezing cold and because it, well, freezes. I'm reduced to walking to my classes instead of biking, the result of a comic series of foibles and circumstances arranged to render my bike inoperable. But, enough bitching.
One phenomenon I didn't think about when starting this project was the deluge of compilation albums that use "The Best of..." convention for their titles. David Bowie, Carly Simon, Depeche Mode, even the double-take worthy Dramarama and Fad Gadget have respective "Best of's" to throw into the mix.
Here's the complete list of "Best of" artists, in the order I heard them:
Blondie
Blur
David Bowie
Carly Simon
David Bowie (again, but this time 1969-1974)
Depeche Mode
Dramarama
Fad Gadget
Larry Graham and Graham Central Station
Marvin Gaye (let's get it on)
Pixies
Rockapella
Silverchair
Simon & Garfunkel
Styx
The Beach Boys
The Smiths
The Spinners
Warren Zevon
SO. MUCH. BEST. MUSIC.
I'm glad that I actually listened to Pixies. I mean, mutilating waves are great and whatnot, but I'm sure the band had a little more substance.
And now, something completely different.
Yes, that's Panjabi MC, off his album Bhangra. I thought you'd like it. I have this strange soft spot for anything pseudo-spoken in another language in music. Its like a kryptonite-esque weakness of mine. The other thing I get all goofy for are women talking lyrics over a really heavy baseline, à la CSS, Duchess Says, or even (don't hate me) The Ting Tings (sometimes, when its a full moon). Things rounded off today with some more Hiromi (who's funky piano I will always fawn over) and The Black Keys with The Big Come Up.
Welcome to another installment of Mediocre Masters! This has been a long time coming. Brian Eno, your time is now. Eno, or more pretentiously, Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (yes, that's really his name) is credited by some with the pioneering of ambient music. Since 1948 he has graced our dimension with his rare gift for tedium and a bizarre semblance of what the generous would call taste.
Really? Also, surprise palm frond.
The only thing more puzzling than his semi-drag charm and ninja-fern compatriot is the gray zone where a hairline should be. Granted, this photo is outdated.
There. Now I can direct my disdain just at the aimless buzzing he pimps as music. After drenching Eno in so much of my juicy ire, it might seem inappropriate to merely call him mediocre. However, as we shall see soon, an artist couldn't manage to be truly bad and sustain such a long lasting career. This is the strange enigma that is Eno: everyone seems to want to work with him. He tangled himself up with Talking Heads, David Bowie, Devo, U2, Coldplay, and others. He's participated in various acts over time, proliferated into writing, installation, and other, more esoteric projects (such as a deck of cards that uses randomness and quotation). He's been producing culture for over forty years now, and it would seem that everyone missed out on the joke behind his practice: his shit is cold. At his most energetic we get no better than the Microsoft opening sound. No, really.
Wow! That sounded like the beginning of something potentially intriguing. Too bad it was only some 3 seconds long. He even had this idea of doing lots of mini-pieces like this, which I think is neat, too. He seems to regularly have interesting ideas that get smelted through his forge of banality into something you can't quite believe is happening only because so little actually is happening. Let's study one of his fully developed pieces,
2/2 (from his Ambient I: Music for Airports)
Its almost like watching a sunrise, if the sun were insufferably lame and had a questionable history of cross-dressing. And please don't think I'm hating on him just because his sound is "avant-garde", or "experimental." I can get my groove on to some pretentious shit with the best of them. Ghost Opera? I'm down. A saucy threnody? Sign me up. One of the largest tone clusters ever composed? Let's pop some popcorn. But please, I beg you, please don't make music where the most engaging thing you could add would be a soft voice intoning "You are a valuable person. People like you..."
I realized that, since I will soon be departing the beloved halls of my university, I should make an effort to get as much as possible from my library. Books, DVD's, music, sheet music, poetry anthologies all ripe for the *perusing*. I was elated to find Tinariwen and their album Amassakoul. Since it started with an A, I felt no guilt indulging in it immediately. You might have seen this group on The Colbert Report some number of weeks ago (I have a roommate who religiously records and watches this show). Please, enjoy a sample:
To top it off, I was enjoying my roommate Scott's lovely hookah with him. Positively delicious. He ended up naming his hookah Elizabeth Bathory, Blood Countess (yes, that one). Liz for short.
After that came Beethoven, his Pastoral Symphony and something else that matters. Sadly, a special someone decided to awkwardly shuffle into my playlist. Don't worry, I'll talk all about him next time. The Rolling Stones guested in Beggar's Banquet, and Dave Matthews Band in Before These Crowded Streets. I know that DMB gets some hate, but I cannot deny the group's talent as session musicians. Just because his music attracts a lot of Bro-sey folk doesn't mean he has to be all bad, right?
Ms. Spektor also surfaced in her Begin to Hope. I remember my "Regina" phase, where I obsessively listened to her and learned to play my favorites on the piano. I can still do a mean Braille. One of my delightful finds today was Auburn Lull. As in my other pursuits, I tend towards a dichotomy of extremes. At one end I revel in bloody rhythms and raw, throaty dissonance. At the other end I delight in the calm, undulating ambience of groups like Explosions in the Sky.
Auburn Lull makes it a little harder for me to make digs at Shoegaze.
There's a beautiful simplicity to the vocal harmonies in Broken Heroes. All of the parts are balanced, with no competition for the listener's attention. The song waves back and forth, shimmering in a way that reminds me of the heat of summer. Fortunately, the percussion and bass provide just enough structure to prevent the whole thing from collapsing into tonal mush.
Things started off prog with King Crimson's Beat. Then a little pop with the Beatles and their white album. Revolution 9 caught me off guard. I'd heard about the song before, but actually listening to it for the first time was quite a different experience. Eventually, I came to the somber works of Arvo Pärt. Specifically, Beatus - Tonu Kaijuste. To say that his music is heavy would be an understatement. I appreciate that kind of gravity on occasion, but his work felt very stiff overall. A big part of what I value in music is its rhythm. I don't mean it has to be fast and drum-blasting, but it does have to be interesting. Although the vocals were well-done, beautiful, in fact, they didn't help shake the overall feeling that I had been coerced into going to mass after getting slipped a valium by my pervy uncle.
There were some triumphant moments in his music. The fifth section of Magnificat-Antiphonen was engaging for its awed, reverent chord progressions and its ethereal dissonances. Of course the fact that its a cappella gives it the air of something angelic. Since I'm not Christian, my experience with the music is probably different from someone of a faith to which this text speaks. However, that sense of glory and mystery is pervasive to the human condition, and I believe that it is accessible to anyone of any theological/philosophical stance. His work reminds me of Eric Whitacre and William Albright in some ways. Hopefully I'll get the chance to tell you more about them later. Anyhoo, try out part of Magnificat-Antiphonen.
If you can avoid falling asleep it can be lovely.
-My Uncle
After that came something a little more palatable: The Eels! My friend Leigh introduced me to them about four years ago, and I had only really listened to their song "Ballerina," which hooked me because I'm a sucker for the tritone in music. Enjoy Novocaine for the Soul.
I finished the book I had been working on, Babbitt, today. I recommend it, even if The Jungle turned you off of Sinclair Lewis. Its pretty short, and very interesting to read after The Society of the Spectacle. Anyway, let's talk music.
Amy Winehouse made a posthumous visit in the form of Back in Black. I never really got into her when she was alive, and it seems disingenuous to do so now. I will say that she has a fascinating voice. Motion City Soundtrack and a drive-by Ani DiFranco led up to my introduction to The Cramps and my first venture into psychobilly. For me, the sound is tightly wound up with a romantically grungy image of late 80's and early 90's NYC. It gets filed in my head right next to Stranger Than Paradise, a quintessentially artsy black and white romp through the drifting youth of an increasingly postmodern culture. Or some shit like that.
I dig the slow swank they throw around in this song. The off-kilter vocal jumps, the crazed triplet stutters, and Lux gasping and gawking with a seedy drawl provide the right amount of grit I crave. This segued nicely to another intervention by Bad Religion. Also, Warren Zevon wiggled his way in somehow.
The next band I'd like to draw your attention to is The Joy Formidable, a trio that uses electronic haze and droning synths to create a dreamy bed for their vocals, sliding in and out of focus.
The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade starts off distantly, like its echoing from far off in the distance. The combination of the major chords and distant, almost chant-like melody with the actual chanting of "this dream is" adds to the meditative space it carves out in the distance. (By this point you have hopefully already toked out before listening to this song, otherwise you might miss this.) And this distance makes the climax in the second half more gratifying as the distant instrumentation comes together, emphatically lifting the chant "happy for you" up and away, another echo in the distance.
This chill set up was kind of shat on by Vanessa Carlton and her album Be Not Nobody. If the name doesn't ring a bell, try this. That's right, let it all soak back in. Its not that I think she's necessarily a bad singer, per se. Its why I consider Matthew Good a Mediocre Master whereas B*Witched is an aural abortion: the banality of their lyrics and conventionality of their music smother whatever talent they might have. Its not like they shaved their armpits into a microphone for an hour and tried to sell it. They just haven't made it past the "facile regurgitation" stage that artists have to go through.
Coming next time: prog.
I officially started listening to albums that start with B today! This means that I have now listened to every single album in my collection whose name begins with the letter A. The letter A ended quietly with Ben Lee's Awake is the New Sleep. I really got the feeling that he wants to be Bob Dylan, as he relies on that lilting and melodic way of talking through songs that is the essence of any Dylan caricature today.
The letter B was inaugurated with an assortment of b-sides and rarities split between Bad Religion and Cake.
Bad Religion's got some fun in it, but it sat on the side of being too rough to want to listen to all the time. Of course, these tracks aren't their most refined representation. They've done a lot of Christmas songs, for whatever reason.
After them I got to indulge in some Infected Mushroom. They achieve a nice spacey quality in their music while still generating interesting rhythms (I'm looking at you, Eno).
However, my libraries sick sense of humor had to drop in...
I think my ears just fused together into a giant vagina. For extra laughs, skip ahead to 2:55 in the track where whoever is singing busts out into the most painful, stilted attempt at ad lib I've had to experience yet in my short life. Who do I know that actually listens to B*Witched? They mercifully broke up (the Sisters of Fate spared our universe) in 2002. All of this has been given to me by this past summer at the earliest (for those who don't know, my hard drive crashed over the summer, so I ran around reconstructing my collection from my friends). I have to ask: Who actually intended to keep this shit?
This might beg the question: why did I listen to it? I guess you could call it some antiquated sense of "doing it right." It seems like cheating to delete an artist or album right before I have to listen to them because I assume I won't like them. That kind of defeats the purpose of this whole project. Besides, now I can say things with personal authority like B*Witched is the musical equivalent of a tampon dipped in the glitter jar at school and stapled to Hello Kitty's forehead.
Fortunately, Sigur Ros dropped in to save the day with their Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, an unsurprisingly enjoyable EP. Next came Bowie's Baal and an actual album in its entirety by Zappa: Baby Snakes. Dude, that guy is strange. I mean, I knew that he was strange beforehand from friends who like him. But damn.
I'd like to take the time to introduce a new occasional feature in honor of the embarrassingly trite musical efforts I've stumbled across through my listening: the Mediocre Masters. It's time to pay homage to the astoundingly average. Lurking between the sexy glitch-tricity of Cut Chemist, R.E.M., and the personal vice of Audioslave (don't judge me - Show Me How To Live is fucking catchy) was the oeuvre of Matthew Good. I had the pleasure of two of his long-form works today - The Audio of Being and Avalanche. It turns out that between his solo work and his band I have six hours of his radio-slathering drivel. Give me drugs.
This man. Fuck him.
He hits all of the right beats for utterly generic music. He keeps his tunes at an even keel, somewhere around 80bpm. His voice hits that sweet spot of whiny/airy and unsupported. Its as if he thinks expression is summarily tied up in breathiness. Predictable percussion with a guitar riff slapped over the top isn't enough for this pinnacle of pedestrian effort. The requisite string sections make their due appearances in songs that try desperately to be deep and poetic, such as In a World Called Catastrophe.
Please note the complex motifs he weaves throughout this subtle meditation on death, existential angst, and contemporary sexuality. With startling, evocative lines such as
Here it comes, and there it goes/ Another day of decomposing light
He paints a surreal landscape where his inner emotional turmoil manifests in the ambiguity of distorted syntax and surprise antecedents.
At the risk of leaving a bad taste in your mouth, please enjoy some Cut Chemist.
You may recognize the animation as being from The Animatrix.
Today was lighter on the listening than other days have been. I took some time to dig into one of the books I got for Christmas - Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. I decided to read it because of what I'd read about it from another book called The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century by Peter Watson. I went to some art openings today, although they were pitiful because of the weather and a lack of college-aged bodies. At the Heorot was a one-act by Beckett called Krapp's Last Tape, which was intriguing if not absolutely enjoyable. I still worked in music, though.
I started off with Johnny Cash with At Folsom Prison. Next came some Nick Lowe and Etta James. This of course means that I got to listen to one of my favorite songs:
Something smooth and sweet hides in her leisurely notes. Its love without any pretense or self-awareness that later songs about love (I'm looking at you, Darwin Deez and your radar detector) lost. There's a quote from David Foster Wallace about how the next generation of artists will be rebellious not through irony but instead through genuine, unabashed emotion and desire. Their directness will be their subversion, and their honesty the source of their revolution.
After that came a live album of Styx. This has two problems: I'm only kind of okay with Styx, and I don't like live albums (with the exception of Jason Mraz, since he sounds as good live as recorded). It wasn't too terrible, although the age of the musicians showed in the unavoidable vibrato that distorted their harmonies. Then, The Flaming Lips! At War With The Mystics is pretty legit, and I'm glad I got around to listening to it. The crazy titles, bizarre soundscapes and keen sense of melody all combine into a trippy-ass ride that I'm definitely down for. I got to finish up with some Hall & Oates.
I've pretty much been in isolation today since I have the apartment all to myself, and a lot of my friends aren't anywhere near campus right now. This means I had another day to blast through a lot of music, and thank god I could. I got some of The Kinks and a one-of Bob Dylan's oeuvre (Sweetheart Like You). Then things took a turn for the spiritual. Arvo dropped in again, this time with the somber pomp of a mass performance. Not quite to my present tastes. After that came Jesu and the Ascension album. Quite enjoyable. They strike a great balance of ambient tonal fields and engaging percussion action. Coincidentally, John Coltrane also has an album named Ascension.
Don't listen to it. Dear Jesus and a bag of chips don't fucking listen to it. Why? What puts me in such a state of almost horrified deterring? Here, let me show you.
Look carefully. What do you notice, about, maybe the time for each of the pieces? That's right. Three unholy hours of this shit. Only four tracks. Even that in itself might not be such a problem. I've had a roommate decide he enjoyed hour long techno-trance pieces, and I tolerated them. But this - this album - is a constant assault upon your notions of redundancy, harmonic relationship, and coherency. It literally sounds like a jazz band got together and all of the players just started playing randomly, following one sole directive : make sure you can be heard over everyone else. I can't overemphasize just how incoherent and stochastic it is.
And its not that I have a problem with stochastic process, aleatoric music, or even downright coherency. Just don't use those techniques to create something that makes me want chew my own ears off (I'll gladly rip out my jaws to make it happen) so that I can illegally smuggle them into a miserable former-bloc country somewhere in eastern Europe where I'm sure Coltrane will never be able to find them again. Jesus. Sorry, Jesu.
After that came a lovely dip into Elvis Perkins and his While You Were Sleeping.
Straightforward acoustics, a clean voice and elegant lyrics make for an enjoyable listen.
Next was Wilco's Ashes of American Flags. I seem to be bipolar in my reaction to Wilco. I'm either gaga over their more experimental electronic pieces, or I'm trying to keep from compulsively switch tracks when I hear the lead singer whip out this warbling country-wanna-be twang with steel guitar back up just to be cheeky. Van Morrison and DJ Shadow also got to make an appearance.
Some of the stuff from this album was just kind of funky. Weird patches of straight up dialogue and schizophrenic pieces that seemed to shift for the sake of shifting. But here, in Send Them, the jumps and interjections work incredibly well. Percussive bells keep a lively tempo over a chill base ascending line. And over this are spread some fast verses, rapid rants that play with syncopation and meter effortlessly.
Post-Christmas seems to be just this general stretch of irresponsible milling about. I do quite enjoy it, although its done quite the number to my sleep schedule. However, its given me oodles of time to just dig through my playlist. I started things off with Jethro Tull and his famous Aqualung. In some ways he seems like a rougher cousin to Sufjan Stevens. He manages to work these ornate flute trills and melodic passages in a similar fashion. There's a certain ornateness and subtle complexity to the chord structures. Its like Jethro Tull comes at the music making process starting with a heavier rock sound, and then incorporating this lightness into it, whereas Sufjan goes the other way, always having to work harder to add weight and punch. And of course the lead singer for Jethro Tull can muster far more menace than the Detroit musico-cartographer. But after their twisted little Aqualung, I get this:
Yes, that would be Aqua's Barbie Girl from the album Aquarium. Don't ask.
Post-hanky-panky I got to visit Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Are a Drag. Its quite the amusing number as they cover various show tunes. I had no idea that they were strictly a cover band until I went to their wikipedia page to read about them. Strangely, they provided the beginning of a wiki-walk that lasted forty-five minutes and led me through topics such as business-efficiency models and Finnish swearing. Perkele!
Then Fugazi, Wishbone Ash, and Squeeze all made an appearance. Nothing particularly phenomenal jumped out at me this time, but I'll be interested in seeing when they pop up next. I was kind of amused by Squeeze's absurdly upbeat rock organ which hid in the background songs like Farfisa Beat.
Army of Me came next. It was a compilation of remixes and covers of the song by various artists, so it felt strange just saying Björk was next. Some of the covers got pretty intense, which I wasn't expecting. Hemp made a nice contribution, switching the relentless, churning, electric ostinato over to guitar. However, what I really dug was the remix done by Dr. Syntax'N'CB v. Rivethead. I couldn't find a video for it, so here's the track as best I can manage.
It starts out with natural sounds and light percussion that breaks down into this hot, glitchy pulse. Of course, the song gets funky in its orchestration, but you'll have to find that out for yourself.
I had another drive by Zappa - Don't Eat The Yellow Snow. Thanks, Frank. You're a pal.
Yo-Yo Ma was on the agenda today and his album Appalachian Journey. I hadn't taken the time to actually listen to him. Of course he's fantastic, but I never gave him a chance. I wish that it had been just him, as it quickly meandered into banal, 50 year old car music as soon as someone started singing over him. He was followed up by Guns n' Roses and XTC. XTC would be another band whose name had been thrown around in front me, but I had yet to jump on board.
We're All Light is an enjoyable, straightforward tune. Its like someone put a movie montage in my head of two young high school sweethearts finally confessing their love to each other.
After XTC I had the chance to namedrop Deerhoof, a funky, electrically souped-up quartet that mixes weird patterning with more traditional rock elements. I enjoyed their lighthearted, yet attention-grabbing song Flower.
This awesome percussion riff busts out into something waltz-like and twitchy, with chords wavering in the background. They play with creating several different beat-based "feels," sliding between rhythms that are in three and in two. What I really enjoy about this song is that it shows the band willing to treat the vocals as just another instrument. I'd also recommend Sealed With A Kiss if you like what you heard above.
First off, let me say Happy New Year! Betty White survived, the Beast did not awaken, and I survived my hangover. Hallelujah. I took a day or two break from this saucy music business for the Janusian festivities, so I have no time to lose!
I had the pleasure of revisiting Hiromi Uehara to start things off. She makes incredibly enjoyable work. What makes it so unique is that she comes at music-making from the perspective of a dedicated pianist. The piano is her instrument. With this as her starting point she manages to keep her work fresh and diverse in its tone. At the risk of sounding like lame weather music, the drums and other instruments she incorporates only serve as solid framework for her intense, artistic vision.
After that was the cringe-inducing CKY (formerly Camp Kill Yourself). All of the music off their album An Answer Can Be Found awkwardly vacillated between cheesy, uplifting rhymes and trite attempts at lyrical depth and anguish. Its nerdy, white-kid, feel-bad-about- yourself rock, and its nauseating. However, I felt a lot better with The Monkeys! Fortunately, my playlist still had a good twist to keep things weird:
This is what the beginning of a strange hour looks like.
That would be two anthologies, one for Sly & the Family Stone, one for Tribe Called Quest, intertwined into a schizophrenic mash-up. Is it because they're black, iTunes? Is that why? You racist pig. This was the one coupling that really did it for me:
I am yet to get used to the weird rambling my playlist can manage. As I promised last post, I got started with Metallica's ...And Justice For All. Its good to finally listen to an iconic band like that. It got me some strange looks from my dad as I listened, passively reading on my computer or deliriously twitching at The Binding of Isaac. By the way, I finally beat the last level with Satan today! This of course means that the endings went to a whole new level of confusing twistiness (what a twist!). Anyway, Metallica's aggressive pedal lines and rough textures helped put a lot of other music I've dabbled with into place. I also got to dig into some Mew, which is pretty chill and hazy.
Next...well,
Wizard Rock! I had forgotten about my short delve into this weird genre. The closest I've come to actually going to a "concert" concert, we say Harry and the Pottersand Draco and the Malfoys. Harry turned up in my playlist as well, but up above I show The Mudbloods perform Eulogy for an Acromantula. I don't think there's a lot to say. Moving on...
Somewhere between The Slip (Angels Come On Time) and Yo La Tengo (And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out) I tuned into Pink Floyd's Animals album. How could you go wrong there? I considered posting Sheep from that album, but I have a feeling that wouldn't be news to you. Instead, allow me to introduce Kraddy, former member of The Glitch Mob. I'm a sucker for electronica, especially when it gets a little heavy.
Steppin' Razor satisfies some self-indulgent part of me that just wants to hear something thick and synthetic blast its way out of my speakers from time to time. Foregoing complicated, obtuse rhythms, this music just hits its beats and hits them hard. Not Waters of Nazareth hard, but hard enough. Additionally, anything I'm doing when music like this comes on instantly becomes part of a montage in some heist film. Trust me.
Of course, I couldn't stop there. Oh, no. I sprinted through two Eno albums back to back: Another Day On Earth and Another Green World. You can't spell "enough" without Eno. His music is so ineffably boring. Except when he's singing, then its just terrible. I was reading up on him on wikipedia, and I noticed two strange things: there is almost no mention of his successes (for example, this album or that song becoming extremely popular), and everyone seems to want to work with him in some form. This leads me to the conclusion that somehow Eno has orchestrated a situation wherein everyone wants him to produce crap, and absolutely no one wants the crap. They just want him to keep sounding of his banality for some inscrutable, eldritch reason.
One final note: I've been discovering a number of duplicate, and in the case of Yo La Tengo, triplicate and... quatruplicate (?) tracks that I've had to clean up. Also, I've found a large number of stand-up comedy tracks which I've gotten rid of. I don't really care for them and I consider them outside the scope of my project - to listen to music. Because of this, there might be some odd fluctuations in the amount of music on occasion as I find this artist to clean up or this comedian to delete completely. Also, I've thrown a bunch of Arvo Part into the mix. Good times for all.
Today was another instance of playlist abuse magically morphing into the delightful. Or at least interesting. I got to start out with Yann Tiersen and his soundtrack for Amelie (fuck if I know the unicode for the accent ague there). His work has a great flow in its arpeggiated passages and lilting three-step, even if it gets a tad redundant movie to movie. In case you've forgotten him or just decided to ignore him for your own selfish, dastardly reasons, I'd like to share Sur le Fil:
As a side note, there are too many damn covers of Sur le Fil on youtube. Dear Cactus Christ.
Post-Tiersen I experienced Tori Amos for the first time. My response is pretty mixed. She sits a little too much on the country side of things for my first taste of her. The album in question is American Doll Posse. Things went downhill from there in the form of American Hi-Fi. Children, plug you ears. Fuck those pussy-ass bitches. Conversely, fuck those pussy ass-bitches. That was some of the whiniest stuff I've ever made myself listen to. Really, I should be trashed from all of it (I'm so drunk I'm even making bad puns). I got an unexpected surprise in the form of Johnny Cash and Personal Jesus. I really dig him doing it. His voice just has the right timbre for making me pay attention. Especially after all the tenor mediocrity before him, the nice baritone/bass was a pleasant shift.
Following him was Jim Morrison. My biggest impression from his An American Prayer was that he talked way too much. Boy should just play some music. Then, I got to enjoy this:
Yum. Radiohead. Kind-of-yum. Amnesiac. I really appreciate the stronger use of piano, which is something that kind of gets lost in his other work (especially now, what with Atoms for Peace and that business). His voice, delightfully ethereal, and a haunting chord structure that winds and twists between major and minor progressions, somehow coming full circle effortlessly. Favorite moment: when the percussion casually comes in, propping up the unstable 5/4 gate of the piano and strings. This was followed up by Amputechture from The Mars Volta. My playlist got snooty really fast it would seem. That's okay. Up next: Metallica!
Jesus Christ Brian Eno sucks ass. I just finished lurching through his unfortunate Ambient Music I (Music for Airports). I didn't realize just how pretentious vague droning could sound. Not just droning. Ten minutes of droning for a song. I guess this is the karma I receive for indulging in some Steve Reich earlier and getting a kick out of Clapping Music.
Fortunately, today's listening was pretty solid. I started things off with Mott the Hoople (who you may recall did Ready for Love/After Lights), followed by the amusingly mediocre George Harrison solo album All Things Must Pass. Somehow his backup group chanting "Hare Krishna/ Krishna Krishna" just came off as contrived in My Sweet Lord. After some obnoxious All-American Rejects (I think I haven't deleted them out of morbid fascination) and a one-off from Zappa (He's So Gay) I had my chance with The National. Oh, Ohio, why do you seem to give me such good music? Black Keys and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's? Anyhoo, here's a track:
Secret Meeting lays out a mellow soundscape built, quite elegantly, off of two intervals on the guitar. Some steady drumwork keeps it from dazing off into dreaded Eno-boring territory.
I traipse across the country with They Might Be Giants and their album Almanac, and get to revisit an old flame of mine, The Prodigy. My first introduction to them was in high school and my friend James. Having just escaped the purgatory of Cascada-esque techno and a loop of Pictures at an Exhibition (I'm weird; it was middle school. Don't judge.), the quirky electronic slithers and zips from the Brit trio helped open my techno-encrusted eyes to the vistas of musical possibility outside of the increasingly scratched mix CD's I had received years ago. In honor of The Prodigy I'd like to present this Medusa's Path:
I had another amusing pairing, although it wasn't back to back like Bowie and Aladdin. I wandered into Flogging Mollies and their Delilah, followed by Plain White T's and Hey There, Delilah. I also had a strange run in with Kelly Clarkson. I'm not quite sure who gave her to me at what point in time, so please don't judge to much. It felt like cheating at this point to delete her from the library without at least listening to her once. After all that, though, I found Explosions in the Sky and The Slip.
I know Explosions in the Sky. I enjoy their paced, irresistible climaxes and rolling instrumentals. Its just that when I'm trying to power through a bunch of music their pieces are long. Jesus they're long. The Slip doesn't get off the hook on this either. Fortunately, the music's gorgeous. I had a double up in the form of Aliveacoustic and Aliveelectric. Check it out. I seem to be unable to find a video of the song I wanted to show you, so please listen to Song by The Slip off Aliveacoustic. it demonstrates some interesting Middle Eastern themes not present in the earlier tracks of the album. Plus there's a great hand-clapping section from the audience (its called Alive, afterall - but still great audio) where they begin to stack hemiola on three/four and two/four.
I'll just have to settle with showing you this awesome piece by Yeasayers! Its called Sunrise, and it can be found in the album All Hour Cymbals.
It starts things off somewhat brooding with minor tonality and an unstable stacking of polyrhythmic drums, claps, and sustained choral chords. Yeasayers transition this energy into something urgent, with accentuated percussion and sliding electric. Yum. I'm in the middle of Lazlo Bane's All the Time in the World (you know him from the opening of Scrubs), and I'll report on him tomorrow.
The whiplash this kind of listening style is creating is taking some adjusting. From Smashing Pumpkins to Tool to, well... you'll find out. But first, I realized I hadn't explained how I'm actually doing this. How do I know whether I've listened to a song already or whether its part of the tiny sliver of files I've listened to? To fix this I created a smart playlist in iTunes that indexes any files which have a play count less than 1. The only drawback is that any tracks that I haven't listened to since the last time I lost my collection (which would be this past summer) will count as as never-listens. Oh well.
The first track I'd like to bring to you is by Savoire Adore, A Home, A House, A Hearth:
Funky and glitchy in all the right places. A child of Cantora Records, Savoire Adore can call acts like MGMT and Of Montreal siblings. This pleasant electric wonderland didn't last forever, though, and I was in no way prepared for this.
Lolwut? Antony and the Johnsons cover Bey's Crazy in Love? I can't say that I'm terribly familiar with dear Antony, and now I think I might have an idea why.
But it gets better. I'm just here, innocently browsing this or that subreddit (Sarah has made me a hopeless addict), listening to hip-hop followed by Tool, and then the unthinkable happens:
Savage Garden. A whole fucking album of it. To show my disdain I intentionally chose a fan-made Star Wars piece from "my friend's LiveJournal." The karma of not knowing what's in your music collection is that Savage Garden can ambush you without warning. The album just finished, so I'm gonna call it a night.
Ugh. I have to be up for the beginnings of my Christmas rituals, starting with lunch. I get to see family, which is great. However, I also have to get up. In any case my insomnia led me through metal to Alarm Will Sound and sundry other places. My first offering is The Hard Way by Racebannon.
I'm not quite sure how this video fits in with any of it...moving on.
Eventually I stumbled into Alarm Will Sound, a chamber orchestra that, in this case, did an awesome cover of music by Aphex Twin. I'm a sucker for intricate instrumentals, and what else can I expect from Aphex Twin? Of particular interest to me is the song Avril 14th, which Kanye borrows from in his Blame Game. From there it was a short step over to The Dear Hunter and the Violent Femmes. The Violent Femmes are getting a solid "meh" from me right now, so allow me to leave you with a piece of The Dear Hunter:
