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martianarctic · 5 years ago

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Devin’s Playlist -2010s Part 1

This is an unfinished retrospective look at what I listened to during the 2010s. This decade was exceptional for me, as it was the first decade where, for almost all of it, I was not a musician myself.

Being a musician forces you to listen to music like a musician, and being free of that, and able to listen as a listener alone, really made this a spectacular decade for me. I found dozens of incredible albums that were released during the decade, many of which received no significant recognition.

This was a very large project, and I did not finish it. I made it through Retrowave, Shoegaze, and Post punk. If anybody cares, I will finish the entire project, which will add Dreampop (the largest category), Vaporwave, and Dark Ambient.

Retrowave: Retrowave is electronic music that, at first listen, sounds like it may be from the 80s or 90s, mostly because the synths it uses to generate the music are either retro-inspired or literally retro equipment in some of the more extreme cases. It generally features original compositions, often, but not always, is instrumental. Rough vocals would impede the tightness and angularity of the music, so when vocals are used they are often pop produced and highly melodic. This genre gained significant exposure from Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece, “Drive”.

Galactic Melt (2011) Com Truise

Electronic artist Com Truise rose to prominence off of this fantastic record, which rallies around the undeniable electro anthem of 2012, “Brokendate”. Starting with some found audio (chopped and screwed found audio becomes a big deal later on in Vaporwave) and then dropping in an absolutely thick beat we’re met with a song that eventually, as layers are dropped on, ends up being meditative, romantic, and melancholy. Emotions to that point, not well associated with dance music, but definitely would come to color the entire decade.

Era Extraña (2011) Neon Indian

Electronic solo bedroom pop was pretty cool at the end of the 00s being pushed hard by guys like Twin Shadow. I am not sure how I got ahold of Neon Indian but this album was, in a lot of ways, the true start of my musical decade. I had not been so excited and enthusiastic about a record since I had retired from making music. It really gives you a new perspective to not feel like you’re in competition with everything and trying to learn from everything- just as a listener, I was enthralled with this entire record.

Visitors (2012) Lazerhawk

I did not get into dark retrowave until after 2013 and thus discovered Lazerhawk and this record after the fact. Visitors is, in my opinion, the best dark retrowave album ever made, more consistent and listenable than competitors such as mega drive or carpenter brut. Also. This album absolutely sticks the landing with the street-strutting powerhouse “Arrival”.

I am the Night (2012) Perturbator

Made famous by soundtracking the indie game hit Hotline Miami (one of the best games of the decade), Perturbator carved a niche for himself with fast, brutal, high energy dark electronic music and absolutely bonkers live shows. Perturbator has a large catalog of content- I am the Night is definitely the starter kit. Starting off with a thick minor chord, a church bell, and a sample of Peter Finch’s speech from “Network” you immediately know what’s in store- dark, dystopian and undeniably French electronic dance music, complete with breathtaking beat breaks, big bass synths, and complex compositions.

Innerworld (2014) Electric Youth

I had mentioned that Drive was a major popularizer of retrowave- and one song in particular, a collaboration between another retrowave artist named College, who created the low fi, catchy bassline for the song “A Real Hero”, and the vocals and lyrics, created by an artist called Electric Youth. Their record, 2014’s “Innerworld”, is one of the best retrowave efforts, with the second track, “Runaway”, even better than the song that made them famous. The pop chorus “Maybe we could just run away for good/cuz we’re both mis understood” soaring over thick, atmospheric synth pads will have you slapping the roof of your car, as you race through the freeways of LA at 3AM.

Atlas (2016) FM-84

Speaking of roof-slapping bangers, “Running in the Night” is probably retrowave’s most popular anthem, boasting one of my absolute favorite vocal performances of the decade. A group claiming rock and roll city San Francisco as their home base (despite being both British), FM-84’s Atlas is absolutely packed with a mixture of the atmospheric instrumental Miami Vice type music suggested by the red and purple setting sun cover as well as vocal driven pop songs such as the single mentioned above.

Hardwired (2018) Mitch Murder

Mitch Murder is a retrowave institution, having made the soundtrack to the viral youtube movie Kung Fury, and also, I suspect, the original music used by twitch personality Dr. Disrespect. However, he almost entirely releases 3-5 song Eps, making it tough to pick out a standout. However that all changed in 2018 with the release of Hardwired, the most accomplished mitch murder release to date. Starting off with the Jan Hammer style “Altered State”, it stays on brand throughout but tells a very unified instrumental story of cyberpunk dystopian adventure. Vangelis-style synths bring in the closer track, “Revision Control”, one of Mitch Murder’s greatest tracks. Evolving through different moods, different scenes, we can imagine the “human” protagonist confronting his cyborg nemesis he has been tasked to execute.

Retrowave Album of the Decade:

Dark All Day (2018) Gunship

As the decade wore on, retro wave slowed down for me. I thought it might be over but- without warning, Gunship, an artist I had listened to but not been completely impressed by, released what is probably the most accomplished album in the genre. Spanning various tempos and musical themes, utilizing several guest vocalists, the scope of “Dark All Day” keeps you listening to the record again and again. This record represents an evolution in a format that was at risk of being just a fad. “Come on lost boys, lets stay alive” over a ripping saxophone lead suggests mere 80s fetishism, but there is more substance than just that. The following track, “When you Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, takes an upbeat electro jam, and really goes for emotional impact with a series of samples of characters from pop culture saying inspirational things, my favorite being “Everything worth doing is hard” which I think is just Teddy Roosevelt. My favorite track of the record, the slow ballad “Artemis & Parzival”, begins with swooning, Vangelis-style pads and then into guest vocalist Stella Le Page’s gorgeous vocals. This track definitely belongs on anybody’s make out playlist. “Were all gonna die that’s just how it is, there’s no escaping the future, nobody gets what they want in this world, even for you and me” is one of the greatest lyrics of the decade.

Nugaze/Shoegaze-Adjacent: Shoegaze is a genre of music that features highly layered guitar effects (often run through 10 or more effects, creating a signature “vacuum cleaner” sound with a ton of distortion and white noise) and breathy vocals. Relying heavily on the depth of character of the sound, shoegaze guitar tone and production is a major creative point and almost all of these records are self-produced. Vocal themes are usually depression-inspired and lovelorn meditations, the music sounds, to most, dull and dreary, but to some, it speaks deeply to their feelings about the past and future. Shoegaze is often mixed with other guitar genres on this list, from Post Hardcore(Nothing, Title Fight), Black Metal(Deafheaven), and Thrash Metal (Astronoid).

Road Eyes (2010) Amusement Parks on Fire

Around 2010, I was promoted at my job to a new role that would require a bunch of travel. I was not a big fan of riding on airplanes. Also around that time, my brother had moved into my apartment, then out of it, and I only had a few months left on the lease. My favorite shoegaze band of the 2000s, Amusement Parks on Fire, played a gig at 330 Ritch, a club in san Francisco. I had a fantastic time at the show, and particularly loved their new material, which made it onto a record they called Road Eyes. 2 months later I moved out of my apartment in San Francisco and never would go back to living as a single dude.

Anyways, the travelling. The opening and title track to the record came to symbolize change for me. And it also was the song I would listen to every time my plane would take off. It helped me deal with the fear that something might happen- no matter how insignificant the chance – and if it did, while that song was on, it would be okay. Indeed, this was, and I will warn you I am not qualified to treat mental illness, but this actually really made flying much easier for me and it is a ritual I continue to do to this day, whenever possible.

Pipe Dreams(2013), Sway(2014), Feels like You (2019) Whirr

San Francisco nugaze/dronegaze band Whirr, large and complex, problematic, aggressive, are behind some of my favorite music of the decade. Their three album career reflects to me upon the primary feelings of youth: euphoria, anger, and sadness.

Pipe Dreams is a blissful set of jams, meditative, energetic uptempo and with almost totally co-ed vocals. Noisy production casts a hydrocarbon haze over the songs, raw vocal melodies reach out of the fuzz and suck you in. “Junebouvier” and “Toss” capture the euphoric and youthful energy of a summer in San Francisco: starting off with breakups May thru July, and hot hookups until September or October when people settle into relationships. Two hungry eyes emerging from straight-bangs to make eye contact with you, and hold it- the exhilaration of touching somebody new.

Sway, the band’s masterwork, starts off with a heavily muff-distorted major 7th chord suspending us until the massive drums, now a hallmark of the band’s sound, kick off the beat into the opening rocker Press. The band switches up rhythms between drums, guitars, and bass to bring rock and roll-type turnarounds and breaks that really keep you on your toes and engaged. The lead guitar is classic legato shoegaze, using delay to achieve a long, sustained scream. Compositions are key on this record- not following just simple A/B patterns there’s some thought to the structure of the songs and record. “Dry”, in particular, demonstrates some of these ideas. A/B sections, underscored with “Drown me everytime… Dry”, give way to breaks, ethereal echo guitar solos, giving a hint of the powerful ending. A 4 chord progression accented by breathtaking drum fills finaly flourishes into a screaming cymbal-laden guitar finish.

Feels like You, the bands purported final album, starts off with some quiet echo piano. The melancholy major 7 chords the band has leaned on throughout their music are laid bare as we press play on the record. Add guitar. At a little after 90 seconds the band jumps in after with a thick blanket of lonesome self-reflection and chemical depression. The bands penchant for composition remains to the end, with changes keeping you engaged as the noise soothes your heart. “Younger than You” is one of the band’s greatest tracks, starting with an almost Smashing Pumpkins/Silversun Pickups esque clean unison guitar/bass into distorted and layered noise, ending with a drum-guided, rock and roll style outro.

Guilty of Everything (2014) Nothing

One of the things I mention in my preface to this is, for me, the 2010s were the first decade of my life that ended with me not being a musician. And it opened some doors for me, creatively, to be able to hear music and think about it purely as a listener and a person. Something others have frequently described to me, that I had never really done, was just spend an entire weekend listening to an album.

I saw Nothing on KEXP 5 years ago when Guilty of Everything was out and they were on tour. I’ve seen them twice in person since them and bought every one of their records. The weekend that I got Guilty, I was attending a close friend’s sisters wedding, and pretty much was in a hotel room drunk in overcast-as-fuck santa cruz all weekend. And you know what was being played through headphones at practically all times.

Nothing is mostly the musical project of a guy named Dominic Palermo, a punk from the Philly scene that had spent more than a year in prison for a stabbing. He isn’t much of a vocalist or guitarist, but he is a fantastic artist, writer, photographer, and visionary, and the creative force behind what is now a rotating cast of other musicians.

Guilty of Everything is definitely their best record, opening with the massive meditation Hymn to the Pillory, into the definitive single Bent Nail, a perfect marriage of hardcore punk and shoegaze elements, falling apart into the 90mph crash, into a wall, final outro chorus “If you feel like/letting go…” repeated over and over over pure drone guitars, seamlessly flowing into the romantic slow jam “Endlessly” The closing title track is one of the best closers of the decade, perfectly sticking the landing on this brilliant lyric: “My hands are up, I’m on my knees I don’t have a gun, you can search me please. I’ve given up, but you shoot me anyway, I’m guilty of everything. I’m guilty of everything”.

Hyperview (2015) Title Fight

Nothing wasn’t the only Pennsylvanian post-hardcore band to bend their sound a bit shoegaze. Title Fight also sneaks onto this list with their outstanding record Hyperview from 2015. Appealing compositions and melodies combine with harmonized vocals, even some 16 beats on the hats- things we expect from post hardcore, but slowed down and smeared out a bit into the shoegaze aesthetic. My favorite track from the record, “Hypernight”, combines some screamo hype man chorus, math rock inspired guitar and bass lines, and is just all in all one of the most unique tracks to come out of the decade. “I don’t want to see things differently, its what I am taught myself to believe”.

Grandfeathered (2016) Pinkshinyultrablast

I admit that I bounced off of Russian electro-shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast the first time I listened to them a few years ago. There was just too much going on and I didn’t really have the inclination to jump in and grab on. Operatic female vocals, noisy djenty guitar, shimmery, clean guitar, all swirl together in what is undoubtably a great record for having a tinder date IF, and I say IF, you’re willing to run a musicological acid test on them.

Whether it was listening to a bunch more music, particularly ambient music, or just changing taste now I can’t get enough of this band. They do slam from idea to idea in a song, but it’s a controlled speed- it’s not pleasant to a lot of people, but once you get yourself situated, you’ll wonder how you ever missed this band to begin with, if you’re not one of the people reading this and thinking, naw dude, I got this shit RIGHT AWAY.

The compositions on the record are, in fact, carefully considered and composed, combining noise rock with clean ambience deftly and changing up styles repeatedly throughout each song and the record. Everybody knows we can no longer control dynamics via volume in today’s world of headphone/device listening, ultramaximizing mastering, laptop speakers, etc. So Pinkshinyultrablast controls it with style. This record is definitely the more guitar-driven of the albums from this decade, with their release 2 years later being more electronic and vocal focused.

Slowdive (2017) Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine (2013) mbv

There are two bands that are credited with creating and or popularizing the Shoegaze movement during the late 80s and early 90s. Those bands are My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. Both of whom released albums during the 2010s. And frankly, both records are damn good for two bands that have been basically on hiatus for 20 years. Neither has really stood the test of time for me, although I listened to both exhaustively upon release.

The opening tracks of both records are absolutely mesmerizing, this slow, sexy intro is clearly the part of them that became stronger with age. The manic rock energy of their more upbeat tracks however is absent or at least forced, and I think is what keeps these from being really what I’d call strong records. Nevertheless, both albums belong on any shoegazer’s playlists both for the quality of the music as well as the nod to the progenators of the genre we love so much.

Time n Place (2018) Kero Kero Bonito

KKB was already one of the biggest indie rock groups in the world when they released this their second full-length album. Making a big move sound-wise from super squeaky clean hip hop style production to sloppy shoegaze guitars and drums, they alienated a lot of fans with Time n Place, but I don’t see how. For me, coming in for Time n Place and then going back in the catalogue to Bonito Generation, I see it as a very natural progression. As the artists become more confident and mature, it’s natural they should explore some other emotions and moods.

That said I am not the usual KKB fan. Actually at their show in San Francisco in 2018 I was probably in the top 95 percentile of being an old fart. Around me, mostly twentysomethings on the first half decade, casually doing key bumps right on the show floor, something scared old gen Xers like me, still remembering their friend’s divorced dads in cigarette boats they sold for coke in the 80s, are still too paranoid to do. The crowd definitely starting pogo jumping at the chorus to “Only Acting” a grungy, poppy metaphor between acting on stage, and being young and in love.

Right after that, “Flyaway“ is the upbeat shoegazey manic anthem that really got me sucked into the band to begin with. Combining fuzzy guitars that are more reminiscent of Japanese rock bands of the 00s than shoegaze with a crystalline clear melodic vocal line from Sarah, this is the track where I grab a handful of dirt from my dying hill, and say if you don’t like this song, you don’t like the band, the record, or my musical taste.

Miserable Miracles (2018) Pinkshinyultrablast

Reinventing themselves record by record, Pinkshinyultrablast keeps on the cutting edge and doesn’t make a habit of anything. Miserable Miracles is more electronics driven, lead and pad synthesizers bringing in the music with their trademark soaring, operatic vocals. Guitars are present as well, but heavily stretched with cathedral reverb and long delay. A smoother sound than Grandfeathered, but well-poised to issue a majestic, meditative prayer such as “Find your Saint”, my favorite track. Like walking into a Germanic church on Sunday, the vocals rise to the ceiling forcing you to look up at the light breaking in through stained glass synthesizers. At about 100 seconds, all of the pieces drop in together to lift you into wherever it is you are going. “I used to talk- about it” brings the heavenly outro to bear, one of the most powerful musical moments of the decade.

Astronoid (2019) Astronoid

I am part of a few music groups on Facebook, and one of them mentioned this band, calling them “Dream Thrash”- a combination of dreampop and thrash metal. I’d say its more thrashgaze, with heavy effects/djenty guitar and the more whispery vocals than are a hallmark of the shoegaze genre, not the clear pop produced vocals that are the hallmark of dreampop.

That out of the way, this is possibly my favorite record of 2019. The opening track, “A New Color”, brims with energy and hopeful optimism and replaced Road Eyes as my airplane take off song. Right around 3 minutes in, when the plane is airborne and gaining climbing u to cruise, when we’re often breaking through the clouds, comes in possibly my favorite guitar solo of all time. On this record, Astronoid are unquestionably uptempo metal yet somehow at the same time being slow-changing enough to carry the emotional weight of shoegaze. The second track, “Dream in Lines”, is an aggressive, more metal-informed rocker, and the third is a power ballad that absolutely sealed the deal for me in terms of loving this album.

Other high points include the uptempo thrash jam “Breathe” and “Water”. Again infusing the metal, djenty mute strum guitar with soaring vocals and heavy backing harmonics, this record continues again and again to deliver head-banging jams that touch and heal a deep sadness in the soul. “Water” is a darker exploration, starting with a heavy chunky two-guitar & bass instrumental, virtuous breaks, and expansive echo and reverb. The band sounds like they are playing in the middle of an interstellar arena, fists human and alien in the sky.

The album sticks the landing with the penultimate track “Beyond the Scope”. This incredible song starts slowly, but upon reaching a turn, goes double-time as the melody and music climbs in pitch at 100 seconds in. This transition takes us into a greater urgency, with sustained, over-flying guitar notes keeping the harmony rich and complex.

Then, the beat drops out and a single guitar chord rings- “My hands are on my ears/They won’t stop ringing” smashes into your brain and your heart. Then again, the building section- “Feeble-minded/I can not decide/in my world, now I know/there’s no such thing as dying/so leave with a goodbye” and into another build and back to the chorus-

“My hands are on my ears/they won’t stop ringing”. I don’t think any lyric can better express the decade than that. If it were somehow possible for this album to end on this song, it would be at the head of this category.

Everything Starts to Be a Reminder (2019) Echodrone

As a former musician, I have a lot of friends who are musicians. I am very brutally honest about my feelings in music and that can make it awkward to have to comment on a friend’s hard work. Echodrone’s latest record made this very easy- the record is simply amazing. Echodrone’s earlier records bounced off of me a bit, but this one has just the right mixture of drone-drenched empty space, ethereal vocals, emotional anguish and euphoria, and a strong connection to the last 10 years in my mind. The tracks are named after the four seasons, starting with Winter and ending with Autumn. Interestingly, the tracks do not really stand out as being separate in my mind, much like how you cannot easily separate a season from another season in the same year.

“Winter” explodes with an epic, cymbal-laden meditation, that continues to grow and grow and expand, then finally becomes quieter, more melodic, and less drony in the second half of the 18 ½ minute song.

“Spring” features a finger-pick echo guitar interspersed with a beautiful co-ed vocal line guiding us down a pathway of different melodic and harmonic ideas. It then enters into a several-minutes long jammy contemplation that is utterly ecstatic to me- synths layered with effects-laden bass and more echo guitar into a full stop.

The best song on the record, “Summer”, begins with a vocal sample into a more or less straight-ahead rock and roll jam. This gives way to a downtempo effects section, then at right after 4 ½ minutes, gives way to a sound I can only call Olympian in hugeness. Fuzz bass, echoing guitars, and multilayered female vocals create this trance-like atmosphere that is rarefied and deeply marked with potent and everchanging imagery at the same time, like cream on top of coffee.

The sound continues to change and becomes quiet again once again with echo guitars carrying the music through. Back to a rhythmic return at 12 ¾ minutes. A synth flute melody flies over the whispered vocals, complex drum patterns- an opine to the end of life’s summer, the bitter sweetness of being old enough to not be hurt anymore by unlikely things failing to fly.

Shoegaze Album of the Decade:

Sunbather (2013) Deafheaven

A single distorted guitar chord progression holding several notes through the chords for changing harmonics, exploding into double kick and even more guitars, into black metal screaming- this is the unmistakable beginning of Sunbather by San Francisco black metal band Deafheaven.

Due to its downtempo sections, overall distorted and layered production, and emotional scope, this album is loved not just by black metal fans but also by shoegaze fans such as myself. It is a perfect example of a successful crossover- not anticipated or forced in any way by the creators- but it just happens to work on so many different levels.

There are really only four songs on this record, the tracks in between them are much needed interludes. Something all Deafheaven songs do very well is compositioning. These tracks play out, in a way, like classical pieces, with many different sections, transitions, themes, changes, openings, closings, callbacks- it’s so incredibly dense and accomplished that you can listen to this album for weeks on end and still be surprised.

“Dream House” is the blazing opener of the record and puts on display everything we love about every song on here. To make this song the first track is insane, simply because of how over-the-top insanely powerful it is. After a brief interlude of just picked echo guitar, a single chord strum, the entire band comes back in a beat later, and this isn’t even the most emotional part of the song. That’s going to be at 7 minutes, 20 seconds in “I watched/It die!!!” screeches the vocalist as a guitar ostinado plays over the key notes that have been presented throughout the song in brutal crystal clarity. Then at 8 minutes- the vocalist and guitar break down, screaming and double picking guitar notes. It is difficult not to cry at this ending- and this is only the first song on the record.

“Sunbather” is both the title track and the album’s dark heart. Thrumming with a complex beat from the start, the other instruments are layered over this like a tangle of vines across an iron fence. Skillful use of double kick and drum fills keeps the band on target as we get to the breaks and turnarounds. The cymbals and guitars swirl creating complex patterns. Listening to this song from far away with extremely poor speakers would sound like static- similar to how Jupiter looks like a pale gold smear- turn up the volume a little, get a little closer, and you see the rich, threatening complexity of the swirling clouds of music and emotion. The song ends with a slow section about ¾ of the way through the 10 minute piece. An unforgettable echo guitar line plays sparsely over drums- invoking a Cure-like gothic sensibility. Then the band comes back in, playing the same melody and expanding upon it, a lighting bolt magnified to a thousand forks and twists going in all directions. It is the melodies at the end of Sunbather that were stuck in my head, unforgettable, after listening to this record. Unlike Dream House, this song ends on a down note, a question- the rest of the album is to give an answer, and incredibly, you will not be disappointed.

“Vertigo” is the longest song on the record at 14 ½ minutes, a blazing, minor key rocker that is meant to emotionally drag us down as far as we can go after Sunbather. The ending of the song invokes the Beatles “She’s So Heavy” before heading into “Windows” an ambient and spoken word piece featuring a drug deal gone bad- unquestionably a node to The Tenderloin, one of the more drug-laden districts in San Francisco and likely location of the band’s rehearsal studios.

Into “The Pecan Tree”, a song that has an seemingly impossible task: To somehow stick the landing of an extremely powerful and emotional record. We are looking for something coming into this track, but we are not totally sure what it is. We need something, but we can only follow the lights. The song opens up with insane double-kick guitar madness, 2 step rhythm, and then at 1:20 we see a glimpse through the storm, a hole of blue, that we can make it to, if we keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on walking. Smashing, swirling guitars and screams return, our view obstructed. Everything seems to be going at maximum at the end of this first section of the song.

At just after 3 minutes, the sonic assault finally begins to slow down, a march tempo into double kick continuous cymbals, back to march tempo, then, at 4 minutes 19 seconds, only picked echo guitar heralds us into the second section. The star of this section is a piano ostinato combined with the echo guitar, with a second guitar playing playful melodies over it. This is the starry night we can now see that the storm has cleared- this is the most optimistic and life affirming music on the record. A found audio recording of a detuned radio signals the ending of this section.

Eventually, this music fades just before four metal beats brings us to the conclusion- an octave-fingering guitar line and screeching vocal that is in my view one of the most awesome emotional turnarounds that I have ever experienced musically. The remaining outro sums up the entire record- life is big, difficult, unknowable, chaotic. Great albums stick the landing- and this ending does so, with incredible energy, on a record that did not even need it. Sunbather. One of the greatest rock records of all time and one of the very few of those albums to come out now, just about half a century after the 60s.

Post Punk Revivalists: The king of indie rock genres in the 00s, post punk was largely set down at the end of the decade with the major acts of the decade releasing milquetoast or downright laughable fare (are we human, or are we dancer?). However, post punk exploded back onto the scene in 2012 with The Money Store by Death Grips. Some returning groups from the 00s did end up releasing fantastic records, Roma 79 and Daughters being my favorites.

Cardinal Star (2014) Roma 79

I discovered north San Francisco bay area band Roma 79 through their single from the 00s, “Gold”, a sort of heavy, post-punk rocker with a few-thousand views on Youtube. I was very surprised when they reunited and recorded this followup album, which was one of my favorite records of 2014. Featuring a good amount of synth and dreampoppy guitar lines, the main standouts are the vocals and the brilliant drumming, which is a hallmark of great post-punk records of the 00s such as Fever to Tell or Turn On the Bright Lights. The strongest single on the record, “Seventeen”, features a complex drum lines, interlaced with vocals and synths. The song slowly builds up in emotional intensity and drops in layers of vaguely Phil Collins-esque drums and backing vocals, blossoming into a powerful meditative love song. “I’ll wait for it with you.” The final song on the record, is almost an answer to this track, closing the record on a strong point.

You Won’t Get What You Want (2018) Daughters

Daughters is another post-punk band that returned to release a followup nearly 10 years later with 2018’s “You Won’t Get What You Want”. Like all great post punk records, there are a number of characters in this room, and they all can be heard, each having their moments in the spotlight and their moments in the shadows.

One such character is the drums. A crushing combination of live and multitracking effects create a rhythm that provides both the constant heartbeat required by driving rock and roll based music, but also the texture, the complexity, that we seek out in the genre. Lots of tom toms used to keep the beat as opposed to cymbals, practically no hat. Invoking Killing Joke, except when they don’t want to right away, but bring it in later.

Another character is the vocals. Spoken word/sing song type delivery, where the mood and the words and more important than the melody. Lyrics invoke isolation, depression, contraction, abandonment, decline. It would almost be enough with just that, these drums and vocals- but this will also be added by another character, the music. The music seems to be generated mostly by guitar and bass, but there are clearly some synthesizer elements as well, used sparingly and to great effect. I can’t really describe the guitar tone, I would say, it shimmers, but not in an enlightening way. It’s like flashes in the dark, disorienting more than illuminating. The sound is like wood coming off a circular saw. It’s definitely this guitar sound that draws people into this record. All elements are moody, dark, aggressive, but it’s the guitar that really lays down flashes over the blackness.

“Satan in the Wait”, one of the best single tracks on the record, features an off-balance drum beat, carried by toms, and an air-raid siren like guitar sound. A throbbing, distorted bassline in time with the kick drum. At 1:30 in we are given a guitar riff that is beautiful and invoking of a banjo, lending a sensation of urban, southern gothic emotions. Horror film soundtracks come to mind, a combination of unsettling ambience and clear, unforgettable melodies. “Their Bodies are open” the chorus goes, making me think of world-ending events, a transformational death as seen in Arthur C. Clarkes Childhood’s End.

Another of my favorite tracks, “Daughter”, begins with a “bela legosi is dead” kick and snare rim drum beat, possibly electronic, along with a shimmery, surf-rock toned guitar riff. As the song proceeds, more elements are dropped in, and the drums are of particular note here, at 1:23 or so, they drop into a complex beat involving toms, cymbals, and snare. At 2:05 they drop in a clear guitar riff on top of raw noise, building to a climax with the vocal “There’s a war!” At this point, the noise drops out, just a clear guitar riff reminiscent of “Satan in the Wait”, drums coming in at 3:15 or so are particularly impactful.

The final track, “Guest House”, opens on a nearly unbearable sonic assault, the lyrics invoking somebody trapped outside of a bomb shelter during an apocalypse. Once again the gap between unbearable noise and beautiful melody is bridged, as the final dissonant chords give way to deep, harmonic, peaceful orchestra swells.

Post Punk Album of the Decade:

The Money Store (2012) Death Grips

The first time somebody played “Get Got” for me, it was during a really chillwave phase in my music taste and I was completely lost, and didn’t really understand what people saw in Death Grips. I was intrigued enough though, and circled back on some tracks from Exmilitary, their prior record. The more laid back tone and empty space present in tracks such as “Culture Shock” kept me interested enough to give The Money Store another shot a year or so later.

As my interest in chillwave started to fade, and I sought more emotional substance to my music, I returned to the Money Store, and was hooked. Each track is a relentless blast of aggressive drum beats, synthesizer driven melodies, and of course the unmistakable rap vocals of MC Ride.

A strong comparison for me, is between this record, and Joy Division’s second and final record, “Closer”. Relentless beats, but never getting boring, always inventing new rhythms to cast a texture over the musical landscape. Short, fast songs, transitioning from one beat and tempo to the other, never giving you a chance to catch your breath.

The music is highly influenced by hip hop, appearing to be a chopped and cut style, with synthesizers combined with production on the vocals, adding vocals, filter sweeps, reverses, etc- so much energy and craft went into creating what is on its surface very simple music- drums, vocals, and production. Standout track “Hustle Bones” does a fantastic job of expressing what is so great about every song on this record. Everything barely makes sense, but then it all comes together in a singular moment that anybody can nod their head to.

MC Ride’s best is on display in the classic hit, “I’ve Seen Footage”. In his relentless, attacking rap style, he tells us the story of watching gore or wtf videos from reddit or 4chan (or Stile Project if you’re really old like me)- describing what he’s seen, and then underscoring that with the chorus, “I stay noided”- the character Ride creates is deeply anxious and paranoid, while at the same time being insatiable in the quest for knowing more, something I believe is nearly universal to the experience of the internet-informed human, a phenomenon that would later in the decade lead to diseases thought dead brought back by anti-vax movements, and the election of conspiracy theorist and popularizer Donald Trump as president of the united states.

And that’s the formula to each track on Money Store- working around something more or less literal, Ride’s poetry brings us into the dark state the world was only beginning to enter at the start of the decade.

Closing track “Hacker” opens with a recording of Ride, yelling, presumably at a concert “No ins and outs!!! You come out, your shit is GONE”, then into a 4-on the floor dance beat to end the record on an absolute banger. The music, carried by the beat and Ride’s systematic delivery, is left to its own devices, with glitchy, cut-off synth arpeggios, everything getting out of the way of the beat. “Having conversations with your car alarm”, “you speak with us in certain circles, you will be dethroned or detained”, and “Gaga can’t handle this shit” are some of the lyrical gems that Ride has saved for last here, closing out a post punk record that stands alongside Closer or Turn on the Bright Lights as one of the best of all time.

#music postpunk shoegaze retrowave vaporwave ambient darkambient dreampop nothingmusic whirr deafheaven astronoid deathgrips

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ebola-kun · 5 years ago

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L.A.'s Music Industry Women Are Sick of the Same Old Song When It Comes to Equality | L.A. Weekly

"Threats, hate accounts, weird fan interactions, being hacked several times over the last year — reporting harassment and blocking just became a part of life as I now know it," Addams says. "For some fans it became their life's mission to watch my every move via social media, create false narratives, all in order to let people know that I am not perfect. The same fake accounts of online detectives trying to prove by my actions that I might possibly be lying. They suggested I deserved what happened to me. They questioned why after 20 years would I destroy a man's life? I did not destroy anybody's life. The man who did what he did to me and many other women destroyed his own life by his egregious actions."

Courtesy Purple Crush

Women in the music industry who come forward with similar stories can expect just as much harassment, judgment and doubt online as support, and probably more of the former because "sex, drugs and rock & roll" is built into its mystique. It's expected. Still, some have been brave enough to speak out regardless. In the pop world, Taylor Swift and Kesha were the biggest names to call out behaviors ranging from inappropriate to abusive. And in R&B and hip-hop, the list of men accused of varying degrees of assault goes on and on: Russell Simmons, R. Kelly, L.A. Reid, Chris Brown —all of whom seem to have been for the most part, unscathed professionally. Indeed, the inherent rebelliousness and seduction of the music world makes for a slippery slope. While I spoke with women in indie and rock music for this story, there are so many more to talk to and the problem is far-reaching. The L.A. Weekly will continue to explore these issues within other genres and L.A. nightlife environments on a regular basis next year.

The dance music world for example, is particularly troublesome. Isla Jones of the electro-dance group Purple Crush and promoter of L.A.'s Banjee Ball parties recalls how she found herself the target of cyberbullying via DJ/producer Diplo's Hollertronix message board. "There was this 'dude bro' persona that Diplo iconified, which legions of internet DJs emulated. Being the outspoken woman that I am, I became an easy target for them and was clowned on a weekly basis," she says. The clowning translated into physical violence a couple times, and Jones, who is known in L.A. for her inclusive LGBTQ events, says that it was celebrated online. "It felt like digital rape."

Alice Glass, former frontwoman of Crystal Castles, is one of the few indie artists who came out with a story similar to Addams', accusing her ex-bandmate and beau Ethan Kath of physical and sexual abuse in October 2017. He denied it and filed a defamation suit against her, which was later dismissed. She has gone on to make some of the most powerful music of her career and now is seen as an advocate for victims of assault. In general, though, women who want to prove they can rock with the boys seem more likely to suck it up. As one rock legend tells it, it's hard enough getting acknowledged as a musician in the first place.

"The Go-Go's had been together for three years and could sell out any club we played on the West Coast," recalls guitarist/songwriter Jane Wiedlin, "yet not one major label was interested in us. The attitude was, there'd never been a successful all-female band and so there never would be. There was even an article on the front page of the L.A. Times' Calendar section: 'Why Can't The Go-Go's Get a Record Deal?' It was very frustrating. Finally, a new and tiny label, I.R.S. Records, came to see us, loved us, and offered us a record deal."

Brit Witt at Coachella

Zane Roessell

Though I.R.S. was small, it cared about the band and supported them irrespective of sex, which put The Go-Go's on a successful, hit-packed trajectory. Still, when Wiedlin forged a career on her own years later, she was not immune to vulturous actions. "When I first went solo, in 1985, I took a dinner meeting with a record producer who claimed he wanted to work with me," she recalls. "He ended up trapping me in a room and wouldn't let me leave until I 'put out.' I ended up giving in because I didn't know what else to do. For decades I thought it was my fault, because I hadn't fought back. Now I feel differently about it. Now I know I was assaulted by a sexual predator."

Wiedlin's story is not revelatory but it does reflect how women who accepted these behaviors back then view their experiences now. And whether onstage or off-, the challenges remain the same. Even when women seemingly are in control, they often have to deal with limitations that hinder their success if they don't act a certain way. Men in power were — and are — allowed to wield it without judgment; women, not so much.

Michelle Carr at Jabberjaw

Courtesy Jabberjaw

Britt Witt has made a name for herself booking and running the Hi Hat in Highland Park, but it didn't come easy. "I think I was in denial. I think I still am because I've always just focused on getting the job done rather than why I can't," she explains. "I [used to] attribute being dismissed, ignored and underpaid to just not being good enough. Nowadays, I realize that I'm constantly overcoming the challenge of being considered intimidating, brash or bitchy just because I put my foot down in the same places men do. Encountering skepticism with ideas and facts where a man repeats the same statement minutes later to celebration."

From management to booking to being a club owner, the frustrations I've heard from women working in the music biz over the years have played like a badly broken record. "Owning a music venue with a guy was very frustrating in that I was never taken seriously," says Michelle Carr, proprietress of legendary '90s music venue Jabberjaw, where Nirvana famously first played L.A. "Most would not take my word. They more often than not would seek out Gary [her former partner] for any wants or needs — he was the default. What was most surprising was when even the Riot Grrrl contingent would treat me as such."

Dayle Gloria, who booked the legendary L.A. club Scream, helping to discover bands like Jane's Addiction in the process, and later the Viper Room, echoes Carr's complaints about being taken seriously. "In order to do that I had to really 'man up,' leaving so much of my femininity behind," she admits. "I was always a tomboy but had to be harder than that. If I asked for something once, it was never enough. It was getting to the point where to be heard I had to yell and scream. To get things done. It's not a great way to live."

"I wanted to be seen as a professional manager and executive, and not looked upon as a groupie, girlfriend or disposable mommy," echoes Vicky Hamilton, known for her work managing Guns N' Roses and Poison in the '80s. "To be treated fairly and paid equal to a man for the work done. I have a much better track record then many of my male counterparts, and the bands I have worked with have sold over 250 million records collectively, but I feel it is much harder to get financial backing for my new record company than it would be for a white male with lesser achievements."

Dayle Gloria with Scott Weiland

Courtesy Dayle Gloria

Witt books some of the hottest shows in L.A. right now, but Gloria and Carr are happily out of the music and club business (though Carr is working on a documentary about Jabberjaw). Hamilton soldiers on with a new label, Dark Spark Music, even after years of not being acknowledged for her contributions. "[When] I was an A&R person at a major label, the executive who was supposed to be mentoring me, who took full credit for a band that I brought to the label, told me that my snake in the grass was about recognition and credit. My response was, 'No shit, since I never seem to get either around here.' A month later my contract option was not renewed," she recalls.

Fear of not being seen as a team player or even losing one's job has been a factor for many women in terms of the varying levels of bad treatment they might accept. It's one of the reasons the news about FYF Fest founder Sean Carlson took so long to surface. Nobody wanted to be the first one, possibly standing alone against a powerful man, to put the truth out there. But as detailed in a 2017 Spin magazine article, Carlson's misconduct was "an open secret" for quite some time. Though the Spin piece featured all but one woman sharing stories anonymously, the tales of assault at FYF-associated parties were corroborated by many on social media afterward, and Carlson himself issued a statement to Spin acknowledging his behavior. "I acted inappropriately and shamefully, and deeply regret my actions," he wrote, though the end of the statement went for the all-too-common "blame it on the alcohol" type of excuses that some felt were disingenuous.

Goldenvoice severed all ties with Carlson just before the story broke around this time last year. Soon after, in what should have been a validating and somewhat victorious moment for women, Goldenvoice announced that FYF would go on, unveiling a female-heavy lineup minus Carlson's input, curated mostly by women at the company, including Goldenvoice vet Jennifer Yacoubian, who previously booked the El Rey Theatre and the Shrine Auditorium. The lineup, one of the best FYF would ever see, included Janet Jackson as headliner along with Florence + the Machine, St. Vincent, The Breeders, The xx, U.S. Girls, My Bloody Valentine, Charlotte Gainsbourg and more. But a few months later the entire fest was canceled, reportedly due to low ticket sales. Many journalists, including this one, were dumbfounded that a lineup like that could fail, and a fair share wondered online if there was more to the cancellation. Many of us are hoping that FYF will try again for a similarly gender-equal lineup next year. We'll see.

Vicky Hamilton with Bret Michaels

Courtesy Vicky Hamilton

Festival culture has in many ways become a microcosm of the music world these days, reflecting sexual culture and pop culture in general. The biggest, Coachella, also put together by Goldenvoice/AEG, has made some strides in representing the concerns of women onstage and off-, but for many of us more is needed, and all the major promoters could do better. Warped Tour brought in a group called Safe Spaces to monitor safety for young girls at the event, and even amidst controversy concerning the group's tactics, it was a signal for change that had a positive impact. Unfortunately, Warped is now kaput.

Warped vet Monique Powell of the ska-punk outfit Save Ferris has used her social media to call out the disparities she's seen as a performer on the festival circuit for years, such as flyers, posters and advertisements that belittle female performers by putting them at the bottom of the bill, even when their bands have bigger followings. She also has told the world about the outright sexism she's encountered on tour from promoters, other bands and even her own bandmates. Like Addams, Powell became the victim of brutal online harassment after a legal battle ensued over use of Save Ferris' name when she sought to forge a comeback after a long hiatus. It got worse when she won the case.

"People didn't like that I was bringing it back and I was doing it my way," she says wearily. "I was trolled. I got death threats. And the commonality was unmistakable: They were all young men, 25 to 35 and they all liked a specific band from Orange County."

Powell stops short of naming the band but says a long-held rivalry with a male singer in the scene has led to her feeling unsafe and targeted in recent years, even by the media (TMZ, Perez Hilton and O.C. Weekly's reports about the lawsuit all seem to subtly villainize her). Powell, who lives in L.A. now but grew up in Orange County, says she became "a punching bag. I believe that in Orange County, and in L.A. as well, there's still an accepted underlying misogyny, where strong women who have a voice are not considered ladylike, and therefore not to be trusted."

Save Ferris' Monique Powell

Josh Coffman

To counteract this perception, Powell is shining a light on it, sharing her experiences online and hashtagging them with #dontskirttheissue. She hopes to take the conversation that has emerged and turn it into something bigger, with meetups and a bona fide watchdog group that points out women in music being overlooked and judged by their gender unfairly, in promos, media and more.

Mobilization is coming from all fronts right now, and speaking out is only the beginning. Like the women mentioned thus far, Daisy O'Dell, Ana Calderon, Michelle Pesce and Kate Mazzuca are all names known in local music circles nightlife and beyond, the first three as top L.A. DJs and music curators/supervisors and the latter as a marketing and events entrepreneur. Last year, around the same time that #MeToo started building steam, they sought to make change for women in nightlife by creating a group called, fittingly, woman. The collective grew out of a weekly lunch gathering of female DJs, and its goals were many, but the main one was to create welcoming and safe environments for women in a music and club scene where objectification and discrimination had become commonplace and stories of assault and druggings at venues, some where the gals spun, had started to become more frequent. The women of woman. realized that it was the mindset — of venue owners and promoters, who were all male — that needed to change.

Calderon recalls her aggravation sitting in on club meetings. "We would hear some of the most obscene discussions that you would never expect to hear today about women and women attending venues," she reveals, going on to recount the conversation that made her quit doing clubs in bottle service–driven West Hollywood. "I was brought in to bring more interesting people to the club, and it was a lot of Eastside creatives and LGBT, but at one particular meeting a promoter said he appreciated the mix I brought in but he wondered if I could 'target prettier trans people.' I walked out. I was sad and grossed out and felt like something needed to be done. We couldn't have clubs owned and run just by men anymore."

"What's interesting is that these feelings of unrest, of wanting to take action in terms of sexism and misogyny — even though we were all somewhat isolated from each other — happened simultaneously," interjects O'Dell, who encountered a lot of both as a touring DJ for concerts and in clubs. She realized it was embedded into the system she was a part of. "We were all coming to the same realization that, as veterans in this industry, we had to do something because the younger generation kind of looks to us to lead anyway."

Courtesy woman.

Earlier this year, the ladies pulled together their resources and sought to open an all-female-run nightclub. But as fate would have it, on the day they were going to sign the lease for the perfect Hollywood space, an accusation of abuse emerged against one of the building's owners by his former girlfriend. Though he was a male ally to their vision, they opted not to move forward. Hesitant to qualify the allegations as true or false (charges have since been dropped), they admit there was internal conflict. "It was a very difficult decision to make because we had worked so hard and we had come so far and we had gotten so close," O'Dell says. Adds Calderon, "It was heartbreaking."

O'Dell and Calderon say they will open up a club one day but in the meantime they are channeling their energy into initiatives: The first is a list of guidelines for the nightclub industry touting inclusion and equality; and the second is an even bigger objective that goes beyond clubs and into events, including the all-important music festival arena.

soteria.

Named for the Greek goddess of safety and salvation, "soteria." is a designated safe space and service hub at music events created to ensure "the safety and well-being of any visitor experiencing trauma trigger, harassment, sexual misconduct and/or assault."

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They already instituted soteria. (which they stress is for everyone who might feel vulnerable at music events, not just women) at the Form festival in Arizona and the Summit LA18 event last month in DTLA with great success, providing safety ambassadors and crisis managers on the ground as well as a private "sanctuary room" and lounge area. They promise much more to come, changing the game for people who love music and those who make it at events.coalition

Sadly, Addams is not making music any longer, but for those who are, like Glass, and new female artists, establishing boundaries is key so that the various forms of mistreatment outlined here will no longer be normalized. Despite the challenges, more women than ever are out there rocking, and in L.A. acts like Starcrawler, Deap Vally, The Regrettes, Cherry Glazerr, Kate Crash, Beck Black, Feels, Dorothy, War Paint, Best Coast and so many more are re-defining the roles, audaciously and unapologetically, scoring huge opening-band tour slots and higher rankings on festival lineups in the process. Local female ground-breakers like L7, Allison Wolfe, Abby Travis, Alice Bag, and Miss Wiedlin herself, are still at it too.

In addition to woman. other groups are providing even more platforms: the Women of Rock project has been collecting stories for some time now, and there's the Girl Cult coalition (which has an event this weekend). There's also Women in Music L.A, and the new book Women Who Rock has spawned an activist group as well. Private women's groups on Facebook have been a resource for women from all walks of life (the music world included) such as "Girls Night Out" and "Binders Full of Women Writers," both of which throw events in town. The latter has led to a popular annual event called BinderCon in various cities.

Beyond supporting each other and holding certain men responsible for their actions, the cultural reckoning happening right now is about finding power in numbers. In the L.A. music scene, it's transcending talk, taking action and hopefully transforming old norms so that real change can occur and everyone, no matter what gender they identify with, can unite and celebrate life. "Solutions are the future of the conversation," O'Dell says hopefully. "It's so exciting to see what was born out of women in nightlife and music holding space for each other."

This content was originally published here.

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almedakuykendall-blog · 6 years ago

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7 French Musicians You Want To Listen To Now

Keep in mind the halcyon days when musical genres had distinct traces? Their musical backgrounds are punk, metallic, jazz and classical, which they've effective-tuned to a wholly distinctive sound. Merely said, OSOG is a carnival of music. I discover that all music is slowly infusing with Pop. A lot of the songs are actually directed to a wider age vary and could be set to related life experiences. Subsequently, Pop is my favorite style of music. Fast, loud, and heavy: attributes as easily applied to Entrepreneurs as to the brand of music that comes roaring out of their audio system on a regular basis. Although people with the Entrepreneur character sort could keep away from some of the more excessive parts in metallic, few can deny the straightforward headbanging pleasures of Motörhead, Guns N' Roses, or Metallica.

Setting a special precedent, Friedrich Nietzsche's views on music are a byproduct of his basic philosophy of tradition. Nietzsche initially defends the prevalence of sure strains of European classical music. He praises composers whose irrational genius gives the Dionysian energy needed to right the rational excesses of European culture. Nietzsche finally reverses himself. In an prolonged attack on Richard Wagner's operas, he rejects the continuing value of the good" type that characterizes art music. In what amounts to a reversal of Kantian aesthetic priorities, Nietzsche praises Georges Bizet's widely well-liked opera Carmen (1875) for its triviality and simplicity (see Sweeney-Turner). Nevertheless, most philosophers ignore Nietzsche's protection of light" music. Herein one often finds network nodes or concentrations of artists having a number of traits in widespread and thus forming a genre. More correctly speaking: sure albums or a set of songs by completely different artists, because the majority of music artists cannot be classified inside the constraints of a single genre. Many artists try and create a unique and distinctive sound, crossing over into close to and distant genres, while also evolving in sound through the course of their albums. Because of this in case-specific literature, the identical artist is usually a given example for various genres; which signifies that usually artists are located on the connection between two (or extra) nodes instead of proper on the node (style) itself.

Because the ethnographer and cultural theorist Sarah Thornton has noticed, the area during which digital music was experienced by followers within the Nineteen Seventies was just as important as the music itself. The discotheque, later shortened to disco, was a place the place new electronic dance information were performed by a DJ and fans may dance to the music. This was a space freed from the constraints and bills of getting a reside band where technology reigned supreme. These dance-centered environments have been the forerunner of what would turn into rave tradition and membership tradition. Jazz is now a format of music that has grown less popular with the likes of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong and Tony Bennett becoming less and fewer fashionable with the young folks. So the Rolls Royce Ghost is a car for people with beautiful style, individuals who select to not purchase a Mulsanne, Maybach, S class, 7 collection or issacsizemore8013.wikidot.com the A8 (the Ghost is in a class above a few of these options). So lately Jazz is listened to by folks with high-quality tastes, individuals who wear fits and robes, gentlemen and gentlewomen! It's not a standard music genre and in the identical way the Ghost is not a preferred automobile (for different causes). Although the Ghost and Jazz have fewer followers than other genres, they have many admirers and people broadly respect them. Through my travels I had always puzzled if the world viewers was in concord with the music industry in the case of music-genre. The answer is indeniable no. Most people on this planet like one style more than others and that style is - maintain on; it is country music. In almost each nation I have been to in the world, nation music usually wins. And it does not actually matter what kind of country music we are talking about; American nation music, Canadian country music, Australian or Swiss nation music. Folks want good stories, substance and creditable lyrics with great artists to carry out. Solo: This can be used anytime, ideally after a spherical or two of chorus and verse, so as to add just a little jam really feel. Used a lot in jazz and might actually create cool sections in music. When you're pondering of stay efficiency Solo parts are at all times fantastic, audio-transcoder.com even if it's not in your released track. we fell in love with this music, and it is not one thing you typically grow out of, as long as the music evolves with you. and as long as there is a demand, there might be like minded people supplying.

Individuals, stop voting for that ineffective R&B, Pop music. It rots the brains of kids of this era. microhouse : Microhouse is a mix of home music and minimal techno. With origins within the '80s and pearlenebingle6.hatenablog.com '90s, microhouse gained recognition within the early 2000s with its minimalist tackle house music. Microhouse uses short samples to interchange drum machine sounds with clicks, static, or on a regular basis noises. Fast: How Many Different Genres of Popular Music Are There? No. You are Improper. The best music anime certainly tends to characteristic an amazing soundtrack to compliment the action of the present. But oftentimes what drives the story forward and keeps viewers intrigued is the drama behind the music; the motivation, wrestle, romance, and friendship between characters are important components to what are sometimes very emotionally charged narratives. Here are 15 of the perfect music anime for lovers of music, and a very good story.Progressive rock is the perfect genre of all. It is the genre that takes the most expertise to take heed to and the one the requires the very best taste in music. It's a particularly underrated genre. You have received bands like Pink Floyd, Sure, Genesis, Rush and King Crimson. What's not to like about this genre. I can't consider pop is above progressive rock. Pop music takes no expertise, nor any good taste in music. Identical goes to electronic. Progressive rock could be very original. It's a must to really know how to play. I guess folks reasonably go with what's mainstream, rather than what's actually good. Learn to listen to 20 minute songs with more than four chords. Be taught to listen to long instrumental part like Shine On You Loopy Diamond, Roundabout, Echoes, Close To The Edge, 2112, Supper's Ready, Musical Field, etc. , not just three minute-simple to listen to-songs. Progressive rock makes you truly listen and listen. It is true music.This checklist just isn't comprehensive, however merely goes over a few of the extra widespread sub-genres of EDM. Some artists do not match very properly inside any of the genres and simply create a new sub-style. For instance DVBBS refers to their model as Woozy". Different artists classify themselves in multiple genres. West, Martin Litchfield (May 1994). "The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts". Music and Letters. 75. pp. 161-179. Simply if you suppose rock is useless a New genres of rock music seems. Is Electro Dance Metal or Tin-Foil Dance Music? Nope! This genre fuses components of metallic, Rock, and EDM.

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doomedandstoned · 6 years ago

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Costa Rican Doom? Anything’s Possible with Redhead Match!

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Doomed & Stoned in Costa Rica? Sounds like a festival fever dream come true! Seriously, though, I was blown away to find that the Costa Rica music scene not only has a heavy underbelly, but a few doom metal and stoner rock bands, too. Chief among them is a band called REDHEAD MATCH.

The four-member crew from San Jose consists of Daniel Rosales (vocals, guitars), Jose Pablo "Zombie" Rodriguez (guitar), Diego Matamoros (bass), and Josué "Pangas" Arguedas (drums). The guys had been jamming for at least the past three years and their debut EP 'Wasteland' (2017) demonstrated an already very tight band with some interesting musical ideas that were quite memorable, too. Now, the doomed stoner metal quartet returns with their most ambitious effort to date: 'Birthing The Fuzzman' (2019).

The album begins strong, with a meaty, early-High on Fire vibe and a celebratory solo, giving way to a torrent of relentless tremolos pattering across chords in "Dark Rituals." For paradise, this sure reminds me of the stormy Pacific Northwest. In fact, the grungy vibe of the song's midsection have been welcome competition to most any of the songs that were airing in this area in the '90s, though obviously this sound was too heavy even for that time and place.

The singing is clean and strong throughout the record and you don't find yourself missing the dirtier growls that might otherwise accompany this kind of hard-driving material. A good recent comparison would be NOLA's SpaceMetal -- both bands have riffs that (like the vintage-era records of The Sword) just will. not. stop. The difference, at least in my mind, is that Redhead Match are aiming for longer arcs in their musical narratives. Even if the compositions aren't that much longer, they feel like they're unfurling on the grand canvas of a Central American midnight sky.

Your pura vida may involve plenty of sunshine, a daily dip in the ocean, and as much guaro as you can stomach. Me, I take that and a little Redhead Match for the hot, hot days and solitary nights.

Give ear...

An Interview with Redhead Match

I do believe you are one of the first bands we've ever covered from Costa Rica. I didn't realize, until I did a little more digging, that there have been actually quite a few heavy acts from your country.

Well the heavy community in Costa Rica is awesome, I think they are the most supportive community in the country, we’ve always had some great local death/black/thrash metal bands, like Heresy, Dry Bones Army, Nostoc, Corpse Garden, to name a few.

But it wasn’t until the last couple of years that stoner/psych/doom bands started to emerge in the local scene. We have bands like Badsmoke and The Astral Haze, that plays an awesome psych rock and have a craaaazy good live show. Bloodsoaked Necrovoid recently released an LP of pure death-doom awesomeness. Age of The Wolf is another that will release their debut full length this year, and you can hear them sing in our track Grifasaurus, now play their own brand of “Fuzz Worshiping Doom” filled with great riffs. And then ourselves, aiming to play what we like to describe as “doom-infused stoner rock.”

We think the community has been great with us, we have some awesome fans that go to nearly all our shows, always hang out with us after the shows so they have become our friends, we appreciate them a lot, we have a great time playing for them, and it seems more and more people are starting to get into stoner/doom music, hopefully we can contribute to that with our new record.

Left to Right: Diego, Jose, Daniel, Josue

How did Redhead Match strike up a band together? Tell us your origin story.

About five years ago Jose (guitar) made a post asking around for people into Stoner, so we got together to jam and play some covers; just for fun, the first song we played was Green Machine by Kyuss. We stopped playing for a while, for about year and a half or two years. Then Daniel (vocals, guitar) ran into Josue (drums), and they got the guys together again, but this time with the intention of being a band and writing music. We came up with some tracks and we did our demo “Wasteland”, with a Mad Max desert sound in mind. We weren’t able to record Wasteland like we wanted to, but it gave us some experience and learned some valuable lessons.

After that Rojo left the Band to go traveling through North America, and we asked Diego to join the band, started working on some ideas with a more doomish, sludgy sound, and about 6 or 7 months later we had the new set of tracks that would become the new album.

Tell us about how 'Birthing The Fuzzman' came together, from concept to creation.

We wanted to have a sound that was heavier, fuzzier, than before. We love fuzz. The first track that came together for the new album is actually the last one on it, Grifasaurus, that name came up just joking around while smoking. But then we started creating sort of a backstory, and we decided that we needed to write a song for it, a fuzz filled and heavy song.

Grifasaurus is The Stoner Beast, that arrived to a planet to fill its barren lands with green gold, the fuzz man are sort of the children of the Grifasaurus, the pollinators if you will, they spread the Fuzz.

So as the fuzz man was born, so was our new sound and our love for the fuzz.

Maybe this would be a good time to have you walk us through the songs of the upcoming release. What's the story behind each track?

Dark Rituals: When we were doing this song, we were thinking about the movie “Machete,” which led to a sort of a southern desert riff which later became somewhat doomish.

Monster in the Forest: We came up with a sludgy riff, which led to a song about a ruthless monster that destroys people’s minds. The ending’s an homage to '90s rock.

Will of the Beast: It’s just a cool riff that grew into a whole song.

Paranoid Man: The riff definitely brings a doom vibe to the album, and somehow we ended doing an '80s thrashy outro. Lyrics talk about paranoia and gives a reveal about the album’s concept.

Snakes: It’s probably the most different song in the album, might sound like a B side from our first EP. Sometimes we like to play fast. It's about the "nasty" thoughts that go through people.

Grifasaurus: This is actually one of the first songs we made for this album. We usually rehearse in this wooden cabin, and after smoking for a while we thought about making a tribute to a Stoner Beast. For the outro our drummer just wanted to go really fast and then slow waaaay down, it feels like saying goodbye, we love the closure it gives the album.

Birthing Of The Fuzzman by Redhead Match

The artwork is just incredible. Tell us about the artist and how you worked with that person to achieve the vision you were aiming for.

The artist behind the cover is known as Pig Hands, he is an amazing artist that has done a lot of other covers, Dopelord’s Children of The Haze was done by him. We didn’t actually hire him to do the cover, we are just fans of his work, and when he published this picture we knew that was our cover -- that was the Grifasaurus right there. We contacted him right away, send him an early mix of what we were doing, and thankfully, he deemed us worthy to use his artwork as our cover. We’ve been doing some really cool shirts with his artwork too, they’ll be available on our Bandcamp page soon.

What do you love most about the stoner-doom genre?

We like doom, stoner, and all of the related genres. We are obsessed with the sound. We just love the potential for great riffs it has, when you crank it up you can feel the fuzz, the vibrations, and the energy. During the slower parts, it just feels so powerful, it's cathartic.

What kind of instruments, amps, and gear are you all using these days?

Jose: Gibson SG, Orange Dark Terror with Mesa tubes, Boss Flanger BF-2, MXR Carbon Copy, Zakk Wylde Wah, Pigtronix Philosopher’s Stone Compressor/Drive, Minotaur Sonic Terror Fuzz and Burn.

Diego: P-Bass, 90’s Electro-Harmonix Russian Muff Pi, Earthquaker Cloven Hoof.

Josué: '90s Pearl Export Drums. Zildjian A-Custom Hi-hat and Crash, Zildjian Avedis Ride, Paiste Alpha China.

Daniel: PRS Mikael Akerfeldt Signature SE. Homebrew Electronics Full Metal Jacket Drive/Boost, Earthquaker Devices Fuzz Master General. Yamaha/Soldano t100. Both guitars were recorded with a Costa Rican (MRC) custom cab, with Celestion speakers.

If you could wave a magic wand, what are three places on earth you'd like to perform live and who would join the concert bill with you?

We’d love to play somewhere in Greece, there are some crazy good bands there, it would be great to play there with locals like 1000mods or Bonzai, they have loads of energy.

Sleep, we’d play anywhere in the world with Sleep. A desert in California, with Baroness, Conan, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, The Melvins -- during a Mad Max marathon. We can only dream!

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Redhead Match #San Jose #Costa Rica #Doom #Metal #Stoner Rock #HeavyBest19 #Pigs Hands #Stoner Art #Doomed & Stoned

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zed-air · 3 years ago

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CKUA - Top 100 of 2021 Countdown

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From 6AM-6PM MT on December 31, 2021, CKUA counts down its top 100 albums of 2021. Visit CKUA.COM to follow the countdown in realtime via the online playlist. The ranking was generated by the number of plays songs from each album received on CKUA during the year. The hosts for the day are:

Oskar Zybart from 6am-10am, presenting albums #100-66

Amy Van Keeken from 10am-2pm, presenting albums #65-34

Brian Golightly from 2pm-6pm, presenting albums #33-01

Click the “keep reading” link below for the full 2021 Top 100 list, and for my playlist.

- - - - -

RANKING • TITLE • PERFORMING ARTIST • ALBUM • AIRTIME

2021-12-31 - 06:00-10:00

>>> Rankings only appear when relevant

Where Are We Now? • David Bowie • THE NEXT DAY • 06:01

100 • Blame It On the Sugar • Crystal Shawanda • CHURCH HOUSE BLUES • 06:06

99 • Give Me Back My Wig • GA-20 • TRY IT...YOU MIGHT LIKE IT • 06:09

Your Mind Is On Vacation • Holly Cole • HOLLY • 06:13

98 • White Dove • OXLIP • YOUR MOTHER WAS A PEACOCK • 06:17

As I Wander • Bill Callahan • GOLD RECORD • 06:21

97 • KD and Lunch Meat • Boy Golden • CHURCH OF BETTER DAZE • 06:25

Sugarglider • Renny Wilson • SUGARGLIDER • 06:29

96 • The Pet Parade • Fruit Bats • THE PET PARADE • 06:35

95 • Fly At Night • Jr. Gone Wild • STILL GOT THE JACKET • 06:42

One More Year • Tame Impala • THE SLOW RUSH • 06:47

94 • Cotton And The Cane • Amy Helm • WHAT THE FLOOD LEAVES BEHIND • 06:54

93 • Pay No Mind • Burnstick • KIYANAW • 07:00

92 • Marilyn • T. Buckley • FRAME BY FRAME • 07:06

91 • Some Fool • Evan Cheadle • FAULT LINE SERENADE • 07:10

Days Like Today • Doug Hoyer • GETTING OLDER • 07:15

90 • You Are My Sunshine • Shovels & Rope • BUSTED JUKEBOX: VOLUME 3 • 07:20

Talk Meaning • BADBADNOTGOOD • TALK MEMORY • 07:25

89 • Just A Little Heat • Del Barber • STRAY DOGS • 07:30

88 • Spirit • Dione Taylor • SPIRITS IN THE WATER • 07:34

87 • Nicim (feat. Shauit) • Laura Niquay • WASKA MATISIWIN • 07:43

Fog • Bailey Kate • WITHIN / WITHOUT • 07:47

86 • Sanctuary • Hiss Golden Messenger • QUIETLY BLOWING IT • 07:52

85 • The Globe • Son Volt • ELECTRO MELODIER • 07:56

84 • Look • The Weather Station • IGNORANCE (DELUXE) • 08:02

83 • Keep On Pushing • Cedric Burnside • I BE TRYING • 08:06

82 • Wonder • Greg Keelor • SHARE THE LOVE • 08:09

81 • Lover Girl • Aaron Frazer • INTRODUCING... • 08:13

80 • Not All Roses • Slow Leaves • HOLIDAY • 08:17

79 • Something New • Brandon Isaak • MODERN PRIMITIVE • 08:21

78 • Nothing's Changed • Spencer Burton • COYOTE • 08:24

Weasel • Bumarang • ECHO LAND • 08:28

77 • Rutting Season • Charles Spearin • MY CITY OF STARLINGS • 08:33

76 • Stir Crazy • The Heavyweights Brass Band • STIR CRAZY • 08:37

75 • Natural Rhythm • Joan Armatrading • CONSEQUENCES • 08:41

Contact • Jarvis Cocker • CHANSONS D'ENNUI • 08:44

74 • Nocturne Child • Daniel Romano • COBRA POEMS • 08:49

73 • Boogie Let Me Be • Colin Linden • BLOW • 08:53

72 • Ya Habibti • Mdou Moctar • AFRIQUE VICTIME • 08:58

71 • She Calls Me Kingfish • Christone Kingfish Ingram • 662 • 09:03

70 • Hopeful (clean edit) • Curtis Harding • IF WORDS WERE FLOWERS • 09:08

69 • Little Record Girl • Bahamas • LIVE TO TAPE: VOLUME I • 09:12

Dans L'obscurite • Coeur De Pirate • IMPOSSIBLE A AIMER • 09:14

Si j'te disais • Post Script • AMOUR FATAL (EP) • 09:20

68 • Mon Epoque • Dobet Gnahore • COULEUR • 09:23

More by the Minute • Nuela Charles • BLISSFUL MADNESS • 09:27

67 • Ala Vida • El Michels Affair • YETI SEASON • 09:31

Soulgroove '66, Pt. 1 • The New Cobras • ______ • 09:35

Ain't It Hard • Sharon Jones • DAP-DIPPIN' WITH SHARON JONES • 09:39

66 • Can't Let Go • Robert Plant & Alison Krauss • RAISE THE ROOF • 09:44

Roots And Wings • The Wallflowers • EXIT WOUNDS • 09:48

Don't Go • Lollipop • SLED ISLAND ROCK LOTTO • 09:51

Superstition • The Bobby Cairns Legacy Band • PLAY IT FORWARD • 09:54

- - - - -

THE FULL TOP 100 OF 2021 LIST FOLLOWS BELOW

The Weather Station: Ignorance (Next Door)

Dominique Fils-Aimé: Three Little Words (Ensoul)

Kat Danser: One Eye Open (Black Hen)

Shaela Miller: Big Hair Small City (Independent)

D'orjay The Singing Shaman: New Kind of Outlaw (Independent)

Maria Dunn: Joyful Banner Blazing (Distant Whisper)

VISSIA: With Pleasure (Hurry Hard)

Allison Russell: Outside Child (Fantasy)

Daniel Lanois: Heavy Sun (eOne)

Valerie June: The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers (Fantasy / Concord)

The Bamboos: Hard Up (BMG)

Yola: Stand For Myself (Easy Eye Sound)

Daniel Romano: Kissing The Foe (You've Changed)

Whitehorse: Strike Me Down (Six Shooter / Universal)

Chad VanGaalen: World's Most Stressed Out Gardener (Flemish Eye)

Steve Marriner: Hope Dies Last (Stony Plain)

The Fretless: Open House (Birthday Cake)

k.d. lang: Makeover (Nonesuch / Warner)

Jon Batiste: WE ARE (Verve / Universal)

Charlotte Day Wilson: Alpha (Stone Woman)

Angélique Kidjo: Mother Nature (Verve)

Willie Dunn: Creation Never Sleeps... The Willie Dunn Anthology (Light In The Attic)

Alex Cuba: Mendó (Caracol)

Lake Street Dive: Obviously (Nonesuch)

Los Lobos: Native Sons (New West)

Trevor Tchir: Sun & Moon (Independent)

Meggie Lennon: Sounds From Your Lips (Mothland)

Durand Jones & The Indications: Private Space (Dead Oceans)

Maria Muldaur with Tuba Skinny: Let's Get Happy Together (Stony Plain)

Willie Nelson: That's Life (Legacy)

Arlo Parks: Collapsed in Sunbeams (Transgressive)

Whitehorse: Modern Love (Six Shooter)

Mariel Buckley: 97 Riverdale (EP) (Birthday Cake)

The McDades: The Empress (Independent)

Menahan Street Band: The Exciting Sounds Of Menahan Street Band (Daptone)

Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino: Blue Blue Blue (Majesticsilk)

Son Of Dave: Call Me A Cab (Goddamn)

Steve Earle: J.T. (New West)

Amythyst Kiah: Wary + Strange (Rounder / Concord)

Layten Kramer: Dear Apathy (Oscar St)

The Black Keys: Delta Kream (Easy Eye Sound)

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats: The Future (Stax / Fantasy / Concord)

Bobby Dove: Hopeless Romantic (Independent)

Kimberley MacGregor: Sitting, with Uncomfortable Feelings (Independent)

Ronald Nyandoro: Sabhuku (Independent)

Astral Swans: Astral Swans (Independent)

David Myles: That Tall Distance (Tiny Little)

Serena Ryder: The Art Of Falling Apart (Warner)

Crowded House: Dreamers Are Waiting (EMI)

Lucy Dacus: Home Video (Matador)

Lydia Ainsworth: Sparkles & Debris (Zombie Cat)

John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band: Leftover Feelings (New West)

Bernice: Eau de Bonjourno (Telephone Explosion)

Curtis Salgado: Damage Control (Alligator)

The Band: Stage Fright (50th Anniversary Remaster) (Capitol/ Universal)

Anoushka Shankar: Love Letters P.S. (Mercury KX)

TUNS: Duly Noted (Murderecords)

Phyllis Sinclair: Ghost Bones (Independent)

Michael Wimberly: Afrofuturism (Temple Mountain)

Sue Foley: Pinky's Blues (Stony Plain)

Brandi Carlile: In These Silent Days (Warner)

Begonia: The Fear Tour (Live) (Rex Baby)

Electric Religious: Tragic Lover (Crystal Baby)

St. Vincent: Daddy's Home (Loma Vista)

David Wax Museum: Euphoric Ouroboric (Mark Of The Leopard)

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raise The Roof (Rounder / Concord)

El Michels Affair: Yeti Season (Big Crown)

Dobet Gnahoré: Couleur (Cumbancha)

Bahamas: Live To Tape: Volume I (EP) (Barchords/ Brushfire)

Curtis Harding: If Words Were Flowers (ANTI-)

Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram: 662 (Alligator)

Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime (Matador)

Colin Linden: bLow (Highway 20/Thirty Tigers)

Daniel Romano: Cobra Poems (You've Changed)

Joan Armatrading: Consequences (BMG)

The Heavyweights Brass Band: Stir Crazy (Slammin)

Charles Spearin: My City Of Starlings (Arts & Crafts)

Spencer Burton: Coyote (Still)

Brandon Isaak: Modern Primitive (Independent)

Slow Leaves: Holiday (Birthday Cake)

Aaron Frazer: Introducing... (Dead Oceans / Easy Eye Sound)

Greg Keelor: Share The Love (Warner)

Cedric Burnside: I Be Trying (Single Lock)

The Weather Station: Ignorance (Deluxe) (Next Door)

Son Volt: Electro Melodier (Transmit Sound/Thirty Tigers)

Hiss Golden Messenger: Quietly Blowing It (Merge)

Laura Niquay: Waska Matisiwin (Musique nomade)

Dione Taylor: Spirits In The Water (Matay)

Del Barber: Stray Dogs (Acronym)

Shovels & Rope: Busted Jukebox: Volume 3 (Dualtone)

Evan Cheadle: Fault Line Serenade (Victory Pool)

T. Buckley: Frame by Frame (Fallen Tree)

Burnstick: Kîyânaw (Independent)

Amy Helm: What The Flood Leaves Behind (BMG)

Jr. Gone Wild: Still Got The Jacket (Stony Plain / weewerk)

Fruit Bats: The Pet Parade (Merge)

Boy Golden: Church Of Better Daze (Six Shooter / Universal)

OXLIP: Your Mother Was A Peacock (Garment District)

GA-20: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor: Try It...You Might Like It! (Alligator / Colemine)

Crystal Shawanda: Church House Blues (New Sun / Linus)

#playlist #ckua #radio #best of 2021 #best of #2021 #year in review

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randomvarious · 4 years ago

Video

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Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - “Lost in Emotion” I Know What Boys Like! Song released in 1987. Compilation released in 1996. Pop / Freestyle

From an old biography on Billboard.com:

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were one of the most musically diverse and successful recording acts of the '80s. With hits produced and written by Full Force, the six-man performing/songwriting/production team from East Flatbush/Brooklyn, NY, they scored million-selling hits with dance-based tracks ("I Wonder if I Take You Home"), beautiful ballads ("All Cried Out"), and unabashed pop tunes ("Head to Toe," "Lost in Emotion"). They were one of the early exponents of what later became hip-hop R&B. With five gold singles, two number one singles on both the R&B and the pop charts, two platinum albums, and inclusions on various compilations and movie soundtracks, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were the most successful act of Full Force's "One Big Family" roster of acts.

A constant theme throughout Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s history is the influence of Motown. Motown music is what seemingly brought them together and it’s what ultimately led them to achieve gargantuan levels of success throughout the 80s and early 90s. But it all started in 1984 with a struggling New York-based hip hop / R&B / funk / electro band called Full Force. They couldn’t get a label to bite and decided that they needed a change in direction. Having witnessed the success of R&B boy band New Edition, who were transparently packaged as an 80s rehash of the Jackson 5 (a new edition, if you will, of a Motown group), the members of Full Force formed an idea that they thought was sure to hit: an 80s rehash of The Supremes (an all-girl Motown group!). Full Force would write, produce, play the music, and provide backing vocals while a group of girls would take care of the main singing parts.

Full Force percussionist and roadie, Mike Hughes, would then come upon a 17-year old girl named Lisa Velez at a New York club called The Funhouse, which is also where Madonna ended up being discovered. Velez, who had visions of pop stardom, was a member of a traveling troupe in school that performed Motown hits and showtunes. Initially impressed by her looks, Hughes would invite her to an audition at a house in Brooklyn where three brothers from Full Force resided. Velez wouldn’t tell her protective older brother (she had nine siblings, by the way!), probably out of fear of him denying her request that she be allowed to go, and hopped on the D train to chase her dreams.

But it wasn’t all initially hunky dory. In fact, Velez’s first time meeting Full Force was rather creepy. From a 1988 interview and profile of Lisa Lisa in Spin:

...”I sit on a stool in the basement, and I’m looking around, and I see pictures of these big, big guys. Six big guys. I’m saying to myself, ‘Oh shit, they’re gonna kill me.’ I didn’t know what to think. I had just met Mike. Enter the six big guys, and I almost shit in my pants. Paul Anthony was the first one to come up to me, and he bent down and he kissed me and he says, ‘God, you’re very pretty.’ That’s when I thought, ‘Oh Jesus, he’s gonna rape me now.’”

But her fears were soon alleviated.

...Lisa started to sing. “She was singing this song that Mike Hughes wrote for her to do,” says Lou George, “and it wasn’t kicking at all. It was horrible, plain and simple. Because it had her singing so off-key, because the way the song was written, she was singing all off. I was just laughing until my tears came down because of the fact that she was off and Mike had wrote it, and it was just so funny the way the notes was going. And I was by the bathroom crying in tears, and Lisa couldn’t see me.

“Then she sang ‘For Your Eyes Only,” [the theme song from the 1981 James Bond flick] and that’s what got it. Everything fell into place.

Full Force would end up auditioning more girls, but in Velez they had found the Diana Ross piece to their 80s Supremes puzzle: an attractive young woman blessed with a high-pitched and innocent-sounding voice that MTV-watching teenybopper types could fawn over and try to emulate. Rather than wait to fill out the rest of the group with more singers, Velez and Full Force got to recording. She would be given the stage name Lisa Lisa, a sort of play on the Full Force-produced, 1984 breakthrough hip hop hit, “Roxanne, Roxanne” by UTFO. Mike Hughes and a guitarist and bassist who was associated with Full Force named Alex “Spanador” Moseley would make up Cult Jam. LL&CJ would then debut in 1985, finding decent chart success in a platinum-selling album with songs like “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” “Can You Feel the Beat,” and “All Cried Out,” the last of which would reach the top ten in the US. A couple years later, they followed up with Spanish Fly, achieving platinum status again thanks to two chart-topping pop singles, “Head to Toe” and “Lost in Emotion.” Both songs would be noted for their clear infusion of Motown influence.

“Lost in Emotion” really is just a perfect piece of sun-drenched 80s pop. And yet, despite the fact that it’s clearly such a bop, and that it reached #1, it still feels a bit overlooked today. Throughout all my years of listening to the classic pop and rock radio format, I feel like I’ve never heard it on there. Similarly, I also feel like I don’t see it included on all that many 80s mixes or playlists. I mean, this song has over 4 million plays on Spotify, which is a lot, but “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul, which hit #1 the following year, and has that same type of young and innocent girl vocal affect, has over 40 million plays. They’re both good songs, no doubt, but go listen to both of them back to back and tell me which one holds up better today. The answer is “Lost in Emotion” and I will fight you if you disagree.

Ultimately, this song reflects a fantastically catchy pairing of an in vogue and upbeat, poppy freestyle sound with old chunks of Motown mixed in. Alongside slapping percussion, flooding synthesizers, and twinkling, sort of tropical-sounding melodies courtesy of a combination of xylophones and bells, Full Force divine their main inspiration for this song from a pair of Mary Wells hits (she was a Motown star!), “Two Lovers” and “You Beat Me to the Punch.” And if you listen to those songs, you can hear the bits and pieces that ended up motivating Full Force to write “Lost in Emotion.”

But this sweet 80s jam struts with more than just Motown flair. The main, funky bassline that undergirds the whole thing has a definite Ben E. King “Stand by Me” feel to it, which is still 60s, but not Motown, and the extended bridge section, which also contains a nice sax solo, showcases even more glints of non-Motown 60s sounds. The male bass baritone backing vocal that briefly swoops in the outro portion is a clear callback to doo-wop groups of the 50s and 60s, which wasn’t Motown’s lane, and Lisa Lisa also appears to give tribute to Del Shannon with her own backing vocal by briefly wailing an “aye-yai-yai,” mimicking the iconic “why-why-why” from the early 60s rock-and-roll-pop masterpiece, “Runaway.” It’s these combinations of Lisa Lisa’s naturally nubile voice, not to mention her sheer attractiveness, along with Full Force’s expert mixing of both old and contemporary sounds that would enable “Lost in Emotion” to be the most popular song in the US during the summer of 1987. It’s also a tune which proves that, when done right, Motown doesn’t go out of style. At least it clearly hadn’t by then.

Of course, there was a music video for “Lost in Emotion,” too, which plainly shows Lisa Lisa lip syncing the whole song as she and her friends move through a crowded street fair rigged with carnival games and a stage, which Lisa Lisa graces at the end. According to Wikipedia, it was the fourth-most played video in 1987 on MTV.

youtube

An absolute classic banger of an 80s pop song that shows Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam at their peak. You ignore this flawless summer earworm at your own peril.

#pop #pop music #freestyle #freestyle music #music #80s #80s music #80's #80's music #80s pop #80's pop #80s pop music #80's pop music #classic pop #80s freestyle #80's freestyle #80s freestyle music #80's freestyle music

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buttonholedlife · 5 years ago

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This Week’s Essential Releases: Cosmic Death Metal, Techno, Jazz and More

Welcome to Essential Releases, our weekly roundup of the best music on Bandcamp. Each week, we’ll recommend crucial new albums that were released between last Friday and this Friday, plus pick an older LP from the stacks that you may have missed.

Behavior Spirits & Embellishments

L.A. post-punk trio Behavior make deconstructed rock n’ roll, all odd angles, that fizzes with anxiety and burns with tension even in its most seemingly-languid, minimal moments. Take “Cheap Dive,” from their latest album, Spirits and Embellishments; a minor-key jangler in the vein of the ‘80s Boston suburban underground (think Native Tongue or Moving Targets), the track slowly breaks down to barely strummed guitar and abstract lyrics, only to gather up again and stutter to a stop. This is the group’s most playful work yet; sure, there’s plenty of their trademark bleakness to be found, but tracks like “Cute,” “Some Dear Sign,” and “Organic” have percussive shuffle and even, dare I say it, a little bit of pop’s cheeky charm (which has been peeking out from their sound for a while, but feels more fully acknowledged here). I’ve been fascinated by what Behavior do since their first album (the closest overall analog in my head is Swell Maps, which is a large compliment), and it’s a joy to me to watch them build a cohesive style and get comfortable within it across such broad, experimental terrain.

-Jes Skolnik

Jacques Greene Dawn Chorus

The list of collaborators on the latest album from Canadian producer Jacques Greene gives a quick indication of its breadth. Everyone from the rapper Cadence Weapon to cellist Oliver Coates to synth experimentalist Juliana Barwick turns up in the album’s credits, a suitably broad roster for an album that is relentlessly determined to pool out in every direction. Greene works from a general base of dance music, but the way he approaches it is almost defiant. The press line on this record is that he approached the songs as if he were working with a band, which would be nothing more than a clever hook if the music didn’t actually sound that way. But that rethink is clearly audible—mainly in the cavernous drums on songs like “Drop Location” and “Do It Without You,” which have a resonance that feels strikingly organic. Genre-wise, Greene is all over the map, from the ambient house of “Let Go,” where waterfalls of synth cascade down over Rochelle Jordan’s winding R&B-like melody, to the bright and blinking “Sibling,” where fat, twitchy synths seem to flirt with retrowave. The album is held together by a kind of gliding ambience—a soft fog of electronics that hangs over even rambunctious numbers like the album opening “Serenity.” Greene and co-producer Jonathan Ford of the techno duo Ford & Lopatin created and followed a specific production rule book while making the record; as a result, Dawn Chorus hangs together as a cohesive work, even when Greene is pushing genre omnivorousness to giddy new extremes.

-J. Edward Keyes

Laura Palmer’s DEATH PARADE Among Us All

Portland band Laura Palmer’s DEATH PARADE’s overlooked 2018 EP release, Among Us All, receives a cassette reissue on Seattle’s reliably cool Halfshell Records this month, giving dream pop aficionados a second chance to sink into the cloudy embrace of the band’s alternately sweet and doomy guitar pop. This band’s music is as spookily atmospheric and darkly insular as the mood conjured by the television show they so shamelessly reference both in their name and even sonically, but there’s so much depth and shape to these songs it’s impossible to get hung up on aesthetics—though they are, let’s face it, a huge part of the charm with this kind of music. But LPDP have something most dreampoppers don’t, which is soul. Laura Hopkins’ gorgeous, velvety voice winds in and out of her grief-stricken melodies, her yearning torch songs coated with soft shoegaze shimmer that only serves to make them feel even darker and more sad for being so pretty at the same time. The only thing this band needs to change is their name.

-Mariana Timony

Falon Sierra Damaged By System

Seattle-based R&B singer Falon Sierra is making music that transverses the line between soul and experimental. A self-proclaimed alt-R&B artist, her latest album, Damaged By System, is about self-definition and self-determination. On album opener, “What’s Wrong!?!?” Sierra sings, “I want to be adored,” to an uninterested lover over a piano-heavy beat with resounding synths. The track “CrazyInsane” sounds glitchy with light, airy electro pings that are expertly matched with Sierra’s syrupy vocals. On the hazy closer “Let Them [Sleep On You],” Sierra addresses listeners with a monologue about the struggles of making art in Seattle—a city undergoing immense and rapid gentrification. She’s clear about the weight of fighting to carve out a space for herself against the city’s current reality. The five songs on Damaged By System are a good introduction to Sierra’s sumptuous sound.

-Diamond Sharp

Vagabon Vagabon

The debut album from Laetitia Tamko, who records as Vagabon, was bare-bones and guitar-based, springing from the indie rock scene centered around the Brooklyn venue Silent Barn, which also nurtured artists like Long Neck, Fern Mayo, Waxahatchee, and others. But her new record—and first for the major indie Nonesuch—she leaves that rough-and-tumble sound behind, opting instead for sleek, synth-driven pop music that perfectly complements her stunning, haunting voice. The change of direction pays off from the outset: “Full Moon in Gemini” is a masterfully controlled narrative of love and longing that Tamko tells using vivid, specific details, and the way her voice rolls through the lush bed of strings and electronics is like fog rolling across the top of the water. On “Water Me Down,” she gingerly strings syllables together over sweetly piping keys. In our interview with her, Tamko cites Frank Ocean’s Blonde as a reference point, and while the two albums don’t quite sound alike—though both share a fondness for languid, luxuriant tempos—the primary area of overlap is in their unflinching intimacy. In “Home Soon,” as strings bend and sway in the background like trees in a breeze, Tamko repeats, “I give it all away/ but I’ll be home soon.” She sings it with a different inflection every time—first remote, then determined, then, finally sorrowful. The words are vague, but the feeling with which she sings them makes them clear she has a specific recipient in mind. There’s a subtle irony at work: there is a lazy critical shorthand that pegs underproduced guitar music—the kind Tamko used to make—as somehow inherently more “authentic” than other styles. To listen to Vagabon is to realize how foolish that thinking is.

-J. Edward Keyes

Xoth Interdimensional Invocations

Xoth’s Interdimensional Invocations, my penultimate Spooky Friday pick, is a searing homage to Lovecraftian horror: Cthulu’s cold, desolate universe pressed to wax so that we might witness its majesty without our heads exploding instantaneously on the spot, like grapefruits in a microwave, upon exposure. Xoth aren’t the first cosmic metal band to come along — not by a long shot — but they’re certainly the nastiest, their oozing riffs reinforced by maddening screams and live-wire solos redolent of early-’90s death metal. Exorbitant doomsday tales like “Plague Revival 20XX” and “The Ghost Hand Of God” are filled with lyrical references to space viruses and alien overlords, the stuff of Ancient Aliens wackiness — and yet, the instrumentally-grotesque, lyrically-perverse manner in which they’re presented is nothing short of terrifying.

-Zoe Camp

Back Catalog

Sensual World Feeling Wild

I’ve been waiting for the debut from Richmond dark punk band Sensual World (named for what I would say is an honestly underrated Kate Bush record) for a while now, and good lord, what a perfect album for the spooky month. Singer Julie Karr is possessed of a powerful voice, a country-soul howl that adds a particularly fascinating dimension to Sensual World’s sound. They’re clearly indebted to the Wipers (listen to those spindly, punchy Greg Sage-esque guitar lines, and the wash of reverb and delay over the entire album that makes it sound a bit like it’s transmitting from the bottom of a swampy lake), but Karr’s voice pushes them from a good band—enjoyable, smart songwriters, but not necessarily heads above the rest—to something ferocious and particular. When she recites “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” at the end of “United States of Bullshit,” it is both a threat and a thrill.

-Jes Skolnik

This content was originally published here.

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acehotel · 7 years ago

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Interview: Justin Strauss with Nancy Whang and Nick Millhiser

DFA Records set the stage for a new kind of incendiary punk-dance music in New York over a decade and a half ago, releasing records from artists that were smart, DJ-driven and simultaneously referential and avant-garde. Two of these artists, LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang and Holy Ghost!’s Nick Millhiser, have become icons for dance music with teeth, shifting the perception of the genre to encompass a delightful brand of irreverence. They make dance music to levitate to.

The two have become a pair, doing traditional couple things like finishing each others’ sentences — except the sentences are about playing a sold out show at Madison Square Garden and the complications of dating a touring musician when you yourself are a touring musician. For this edition of Just/Talk, Nancy and Nick talk with legendary DJ and longtime Ace friend Justin Strauss about the highs and lows of the Internet, City Hall weddings and the fight against boring music.

Justin Strauss: Nancy and Nick, you’re the first couple I’ve interviewed.

Nick Millhiser: Oh, really? We’ve been duped.

JS: How did you guys meet? How does this story start?

Nick: We’ve had to tell this story many times this week.

Nancy Whang: It’s true. We were at a wedding and there were a lot of questions about our origin story…

Nick: …and when we would get married.

Nancy: Well, we met at Plantain Studios which was James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy’s recording studio, the DFA recording studio.

Nick: Still technically James’ for the moment.

JS: It’s still in there?

Nick: It’s still in there, yeah. I mean it could go at any minute, he’s renting it from the new owner of the building.

Nancy: This was 2000?

Nick: No, 2002…

JS:15 years, that’s a long time.

Nick: Yes!

Nancy: Right, it was 2002. Nick’s band in high school got signed to a major label.

Nick: It was called Automato.

JS: Oh yes. I have your record.

Nick: Oh, you’re the guy. You’re the guy who has our record.

JS: And Andrew Raposo, bass player in Midnight Magic and previously Hercules and Love Affair, was in that. I remember bought it at Virgin Megastore.

Nancy: Oh, wow.

Nick: I worked at the HMV record store on 42nd.

Nancy: Yeah, but that was at the ascendance of DFA.

JS: And Nancy, what were you doing at that time?

Nancy: I was just hanging out.

JS: Were you in the band yet, working with The Juan MacLean?

Nancy: We had done The Juan MacLean stuff. I think that was it.

Nick: That was the first one, “You can’t have it both ways.”

Nancy: I had recorded vocals for The Juan MacLean, and I think LCD. The first LCD 12” was out by then.

Nick: No it wasn’t. I remember…

Nancy: It wasn’t?

JS: Just LCD’s “Losing My Edge,” right?

Nancy: Yeah, and “Beat Connection” on the b-side.

Nick: I was living in Bushwick at the time and James was dating a girl who lived in Williamsburg — he would drive me home some nights — I remember one night he came downstairs and he was like, “look what I got, this is a thing I made.” I remember he said “you’re probably not gonna like it.”

JS: So this is a really exciting time in New York with DFA Records starting to come out and make some noise. For me, dance music had stagnated, and after DJing and making records for sometime, I was bored to tears with what was happening. I started getting very excited again because of things like DFA, Output Records and Relish Records, the Gomma label, and all these cool new labels, artists and producers.

Nick: Does Relish Records still exist?

JS: It does, very much so. Robi Headman’s label is putting out some great new stuff. So how did you meet James Murphy?

Nancy: I met James randomly at a party, we had a mutual friend who introduced us and then we just became fast friends.

JS: You were doing music on your own?

Nancy: No, nothing.

JS: What were you doing?

Nancy: I was working for an artist when I first met James. I was working for this artist who published Index Magazine and we met at an Index party. After that I was just doing various art worldly jobs. The office where I worked was like a block away from Plantain so I’d just always be there hanging out. And that was before the label really began.

JS: There was the Plant Bar scene happening then too. A lot of the DFA crew was hanging and working there.

Nancy: The office where the recording studio was was just this hangout, nobody was really doing any work or anything.

Nick: It was a very cool building. It felt very much (and I really don’t mean this in a bad way) like people were almost pretending to have real jobs in hopes that they would turn into real jobs. People would come in at noon because we have a record label. There wasn’t much to do, there was a lot of playing video games.

Nancy: It was very “behavioral psychology.”

JS: The Rapture was the first record released on DFA?

Nick: Rapture was the first, and that definitely wasn’t out yet because I remember them giving us CDs the first time we met with James and Tim. They gave us CDs that had rough mixes of stuff on it and I still have it somewhere, it’s a different version of “House of Jealous Lovers.”

JS: And you knew James because he produced the Automato stuff?

Nick: We met them through that. They hadn’t really done anything yet and we met them after we had signed to Capitol Records when we were 18 in 2000. We basically spent a year plus trying to find producers to work with and we had a really hard time. Honestly I remember meeting them and it’s not like we were blown away by them; in some ways we were way more impressed with Tim because Tim had done all the Mo Wax Records stuff and I was, in particular, a huge Mo Wax fan. The only record I knew that James had worked on at the time was a June of 44 record — weird New York indie rock stuff. And I remember very clearly the day after we met with him and we thought he seemed pretty cool. Alex was like, “well Tim seems cool. James just seems like a kid with a lot of toys. I don’t know what he does.” And then the first day working with him it became very clear that James is maybe the best engineer, also a great producer, but James has very clear talents.

But I don’t think anything was really out. I remember stuff coming out as we were making the record and seeing things happen for them very quickly. The reaction to that stuff was pretty immediate.

JS: You two met around this time at the label? And you met Juan MacLean through James?

Nancy: Yes, because I was just around all the time. Juan was working on this track and he wanted someone to do vocals, he wanted a female vocal, and James was like, “well I have a friend who has a female voice.”

JS: He hadn’t heard you sing at all?

Nancy: No.

JS: Just figured you could…

Nick: — and the defining voice of electro clash was born.

JS: Did you write the lyrics for that first single you did with Juan?

Nancy: No I didn’t. James wrote those lyrics.

JS: And once the record was out did you guys start playing live?

Nancy: No, it just came out and I don’t think Juan had considered playing live for a while.

Nick: See, this was all happening around the same time. The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” was March 2002. We started making the Automato record in April 2002. Don’t ask me how I remember that. And I think at the DFA party at Warsaw Juan played one song. I think was just before we went into the studio. I have some recollection of going to that party and seeing James and Tim and being like “alright we’re going to start work next week.”

JS: And how long after you met did you guys become a couple?

Nancy: Seven years. Eight years.

Nick: A long time. We met then, but we really didn’t even hang out until much later.

Nancy: No, he was just a kid, fresh out of high school, still in his short pants.

Nick: I was a young man. We were the babies. I couldn’t legally drink when I met those guys.

Nancy: I like to say that we met when he was still a teenager, which technically is not true, I don’t think.

Nick: I think I was 20.

Nancy: But he had only just turned 20. And I was…

Nick: …older than that.

Nancy: Older than that.

JS: And you grew up in New York?

Nick: Yeah, everybody in the band that I was in grew up together.

JS: In Brooklyn?

Nick: No, Upper Westside Manhattan.

JS: And where did you grow up?

Nancy: Portland, Oregon.

JS: And when did you come to the New York ?

Nancy: 1995.

JS: And what brought you here then?

Nancy: To go to school. I went to NYU.

JS: What were you studying?

Nancy: Visual art. I had some notion of becoming a painter.

JS: Do you still do that?

Nancy: No I don’t. I haven’t done it in a long time. Those aspirations quickly dissolved as soon as I got out of school because it was just heartbreak. The New York art world is brutal. I just don’t have the personality for it.

JS: When DFA was in its early stages did you feel like something special and new was happening?

Nancy: It was for me. It did feel like something. But it was less like “we’re in a watershed moment,” and more a sense of self importance, that this is cool. What we’re doing is cool.

JS: What music did you listen to growing up?

Nancy: I grew up listening to punk and indie rock, just garage rock and stuff like that. So James and I had very similar musical backgrounds as far as what we listened to. And then we both had the same sort of fatigue about indie rock and how boring and joyless it was.

JS: And how about for you Nick?

Nick: I think there was a similar feeling. I’m a child of the 90s — I was born in the 80s, but my musical taste as a kid were for the most part, until the end of high school, very much just the music of the time.

JS: MTV?

Nick: MTV, Nas, Biggie. But what was happening in New York at the time was a lot of great underground hip hop, and that was very exciting for a moment, and then it got very boring right around the time that James et al were getting bored with indie rock. I very clearly remember meeting those guys and the way they ran the label, the way that they were just making music — the aesthetic of the music they were making seemed inherently more joyful and lighthearted. I remember James and Tim always had this thing: it’s important to have girls like the music you make.

If you make music for boys, that’s all who will ever like it. If you make music for girls, guys will also like it because they want to be with girls. And I never thought about it like that. I suddenly became very aware of all those shows in that world of Rawkus Records and Def Jux who were putting out really great music, but it seemed it was just all boys. It was all boys wearing backpacks, holding their backpack straps and, at most, kind of nodding their head.

Nancy: I mean it was the same in indie rock.

Nick: It was the exact same thing. There’s something that felt very cool and fun about going to early DFA parties and thinking, “oh I’m doing everything wrong. I want to do this.” And seeing those guys play was really inspiring, to see people make music that was so immediately gratifying. I remember them playing “House of Jealous Lovers” and James had a white label of “Killing” by the Rapture, which nobody had ever heard before, but every time he played it people went fucking crazy. And there’s something really inspiring about seeing something that was anonymous. It was before people were looking at the DJ or anything, and you could just see if it was good. You put it on, it worked. You had this very immediate visceral answer of good/bad.

JS: Did either one of you have a connection to dance music at this time?

Nancy: I did not at all. Not even a little bit. I remember watching a movie that came out in the 90s about dance music…

Nick: About going to a rave?

Nancy: It was either like Trainspotting or 24 Hour Party People or something like that. But it was more about techno and I remember my friends and I were so baffled…

JS: Baffled, meaning didn’t like it?

Nancy: No, I just didn’t understand it as a “thing.” I understood going out and listening to dance music so that you could dance, but then in this movie there were people who would buy the records, go home and listen to it. It didn’t make any sense to me why someone would listen to it at home. It still kind of doesn’t. But yes, I had no connection to it. I never even really heard of house music until I met James and Tim.

JS: And did they play you stuff and take you to clubs?

Nancy: Yeah, I didn’t understand because of the context of how I was listening. And because when James would DJ he’d play rock records but then he’d also play dance records — it all kind of melded into this one thing.

JS: It started to make sense.

Nancy: Yes, it was like, “okay that was fun.” This is gonna be fun to listen to and to dance to. DFA was sharing an office with Plant Records at the time, which was Marcus (Shit Robot) and Dom Keegan, and Marcus was DJing at Centro Fly every week so we would go there just to hang out with Marcus and drink for free. It was just what we did Saturday nights. But then, eventually, I started recognizing songs and absorbing it more, appreciating it.

JS: How about for you?

Nick: I bought Homework by Daft Punk when it came out. I had some sense of contemporary dance music, but it wasn’t until I was 18 and I moved out of my parents’ house to Cobble Hill, and there was a really great record store by my house called Dom’s. It was tiny, but he had awesome dollar bins. Alex and I would go shopping there, honestly almost every day because I didn’t have anything else to do, looking for samples. At the time every dollar bin’s basically like ELO records, Billy Joel Records and disco records. And as with anything you’re buying, with that mindset of looking for samples, you eventually start to like the stuff you got because of the weird record cover.

But it really wasn’t until — and I remember very clearly Alex and I having developed this very sincere love of it — finding the Loose Joints 12” Is It All Over My Face.

JS: Well that’s a good one.

Nick: I remember meeting James and Tim, the first two days we were in the studio with them, they were like “we’re not going to work, we’re just going to play each other records and talk about what we like about them.” I remember very clearly in the studio they had that first compilation of Larry Levan classics with the black and white photo of him on the cover. It had the Loose Joints track it. He played it to us and Alex and I were both just like “yeah, I know this song. I love it. Is it cool, is that okay to love this song?” I didn’t know because everybody else in the band sort of made fun of us. But Alex and I were getting into finding post-disco, very early hip hop, but still disco stuff. Some of the breaks on those records are awesome.

JS: Enjoy Records, early Sugarhill Records.

Nick: Yeah, I love it. By modern rap standards, it sounded amateurish and fun, but I love it.

JS: That’s how hip hop started, people rapping over disco records and breaks.

Nick: I remember the other guys in the band didn’t get it. There’s always this kind of “wink wink, you guys don’t really like this.” I remember being like “no, of course not.” And yet, if I want to listen to it all the time, it must mean it has a legitimate redeeming quality. James and Tim were the first people I had ever met who listened to that music in that context. Just played that music without a smile on their face. I had a realization that “right, if you like something, that’s just as valid as whether it’s fun or…” The 90s was such a funny time. If it wasn’t super serious and introspective, it wasn’t legitimate. Anything that was just fun was not real music. Everything was a rebellion against the 80s.

JS: There was a time when the 80s wasn’t thought of as cool.

Nick: Yeah I remember that very well.

JS: Now it’s cool, but back then…

Nick: It was the butt of the joke. Everything was just like “sooo 80s.”

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JS: When was the change from Automato to Holy Ghost!?

Nick: The six of us had been playing together since we were teenagers and it was just doomed to implode from go. So that band broke up a year after the record came out. At that point Alex and I would write music all together in a room, but there were certain clusters of people who would start things together. Alex and I would always work on stuff together and what we were working on just started to feel dancier and more fun. I think it was even before Automoto played its last show. I started touring with Juan MacLean, filling in as a drummer. I played rough stuff we were working on for Juan, James and Marcus and they were all ready supportive.

JS: And James said “we should do a record?”

Nick: Honestly I think it was Tim first, but James was definitely the one who was the most encouraging at the beginning. There was a point where I was really frustrated with Automoto, I want to say it was New Year’s Eve, and I was venting to him. He was just said, “you should make your own music.” And I said that I didn’t have the equipment to do it and he’s like “well can you play bass?” I was like, yeah, kind of. Kind of a bass player. He was like “oh, do you have a bass?” I was like, no. “Come by the studio, I’ll give you a bass. Do you have a compressor?” I was like, no. He’s like “all right I’ll give you a cheap compressor.” And he gave me a bass and a compressor to do stuff with just drums and bass.

And that was sort of the beginning of Alex and I trying to work on stuff. I did the initial demo for “Hold On,” it was just the drums and the bass and the synth line. I remember playing James a bunch of stuff and James was like, “that one’s really cool.” And it was his ring tone for a while. I remember the rough demo was his ring tone. And he said “you should finish that one.” When we finished it, I remember talking with Tim — it had been done for a while — and Tim matter-of-fact made mention of it coming out. And I was like “what are you talking about?” He’s like “oh, we’re gonna put it out.”

JS: Were they involved in the production or was it just you guys?

Nick: Not until the end. The song was basically finished and then, at the very end when we were basically informed that DFA was going to put it out, Tim was like “if you want it out by this day we should really master it in the next week or two.” At that point James and Tim were sort of already on the outs, but James separately said, “I think you should re-record the vocals.” So we re-recorded the vocals with James, and then James mixed it, but that was all decided and done in a matter of 48 hours.

JS: And Nancy, what’s happening with you around this time?

Nancy: I guess this is around the time that Sound of Silver came out. In 2007 I was in LCD, but was still just a weekend warrior, I still had a job and we were just playing a couple weekends a month, a couple weeks a year. It was like ROTC.

It didn’t take up enough time for it to be something that I could do exclusively, but it took up enough time that I couldn’t hold down a normal job. I started working at this wood shop where we built displays for shop windows or store windows. It was very erratic. We’d be out for a year, and then we’d be home for a year while James worked on a new record or whatever.

JS: Were you involved in the first album?

Nancy: No, the first record James did all by himself. Pat might have played some drums and stuff, but it was really James in the studio alone. Because he started working on it before we even had formed as a band, and then when the second record came around after we had been playing together for like a year, Sound of Silver was a little more collaborative.

I think us playing together on the stage changed his ideas about how to record music. Having other people play at the same time rather than have him play one instrument, record that, and then go back to the next instrument etc, etc.

JS: More of a band vibe.

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: Did you get involved in writing?

Nancy: No. No one’s ever involved in the writing.

JS: Still, to this day?

Nancy: Yes.

JS: So what’s the process? James presents you guys with a song?

Nancy: James generally has pretty clear ideas of what he wants to record so it’s like, “play this.” And then you play it. And then he takes it and does something to it.

JS: Right. And while this is going on, Holy Ghost! is in the studio making the first record album?

Nick: Yes, it was around the same time. Our first record took a really long time.

JS: And were you recording at DFA studios?

Nick: Some. That record we sort of did everywhere. At some point, we were able to quit our jobs. We were DJing so much, which was awesome, but it’s not like we were making enough money that we could take months off from touring. I remember when Hold On came out we had a Myspace page, and got our first out-of-state DJ gig.

JS: Had you DJ’d? Both of you guys DJj regularly now.

Nick: I had a little bit. I had turntables in high school, like a bedroom DJ. DJ’d a few things here and there; Alex never had. But it was always something I’d wanted, DJing was such a dark art pre-internet, it never occurred to me to pursue it professionally in any way.

JS: No one wanted to be a DJ when I started.

Nick: Right. And again, I think it was meeting James and Tim and that larger circle of people like Tim Sweeney, Trevor Jackson, or Maurice Fulton. All these different people were so interesting. It was a pretty awesome time, you go to see somebody and they were just playing whatever they wanted. That’s pretty great.

JS: And for you Nancy, what was your entree into the DJ world?

Nancy: Basically my first DJ gig was in 2010. It was when This is Happening came out and we were touring that record. I knew that it was going be it for LCD, at least for the foreseeable future, and this is what I do and I don’t have any other skills anymore. I’m gonna have to make a living when this band is done so I better start DJing.

JS: Did James came to you guys and said “It’s over,” or you just knew it?

Nancy: Oh no, he announced it in the press. “This is the last record.” He had said it privately about Sound of Silver, but I was like “that’s not true.” But with This is Happening, we knew that this is the last record. It was the last record while he was making it, and as soon as it came out, we knew that that was it. Our last hurrah.

Nick: And people had been asking you to DJ for years and you had always sort of…

Nancy: Yeah it terrified me. It still does. I’m like, “I have no idea what I’m doing up here.” I remember my first DJ gig was with a friend of mine at Tribeca Grand and we showed up with records and no headphones. I got there like, “how are you supposed to listen to this stuff?”

JS: Did somebody show you how to DJ or you just figured it out?

Nancy: Well, a couple of friends had showed me, “this is what you do with the turntable” and “this is how it works with the mixer,” but it was still beyond me. The first year of DJing was just me playing a record and then playing another song after that song was finished, and playing another song after that one was finished.

JS: And you were also doing shows and records with Juan MacLean at this time.

Nancy: Yes. While James was making This is Happening, I was on tour with Juan. We had just done that record The Future Will Come.

JS: Was that a more collaborative process?

Nancy: Yeah, with me and Juan it’s more of a partnership.

JS: Is that still something that’s on going?

Nancy: Yes, in fact I might record with him tomorrow.

JS: And at this time you guys are a couple?

Nancy: No. This was 2010, beginning of that tour. We played Coachella, we had been to Europe, and then we came back and were going to go on a U.S. tour. We did a run of shows at Terminal 5 before we left and we took Holy Ghost! with us on tour; they also did all the Terminal 5 shows with us. We did that, we went on tour, and then the tour was over, and…

Nick: And we missed each other.

Nancy: And we missed each other. A couple months later we got together.

JS: DFA is a very incestuous family.

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: There’s a lot of cross pollination with bands, and it’s great.

Nancy: Totally. Andrew Raposo (Hercules and Love Affair’s original bass player) played in LCD for a couple shows because we needed somebody to fill in.

JS: You two both have very busy lives between your bands, your DJing, working on your new house, your dog. I’m impressed with how you manage it.

Nancy: I think it’s actually because we both do the same thing, we understand the life.

Nick: I think there are things about dating a touring musician that’s just inherently difficult. But when you’re in a relationship with somebody else who does that too, a few of those things they understand. They know that you’re going to have to go away and it’s not because you don’t want to be at home.

JS: It’s your job.

Nick: Yes. And when you come home you might be a little fried and might not be able to just jump back into life-as-usual. I see friends who are in a relationship and they fight about touring or it becomes a source of tension in the relationship…that tension isn’t in ours. That being said, it’s still tough because there are times when you’re both busy at the same time. There was one time two years ago when she was away for two weeks, got home the day that I left for two weeks, and the day I got back she left again for two weeks.

JS: So you didn’t see each other for a month or something.

Nick: More. And that sucks, there’s no way around it. I think we make it work better than most people, but it’s not always easy.

JS: Being in a band is like a relationship, and then there is being in a relationship.

Nick: I think that’s the hardest part for people who aren’t musicians or touring musicians to understand. That this something else in your life isn’t more important than you.

Nancy: But sometimes it is.

Nick: But sometimes it is. Or maybe it’s just as important as you.

Nancy: Or today it’s more important than you. Tomorrow you’ll be more important than this, but today this is what’s important.

Nick: It’s a very hard thing to explain to somebody, understandably. It sort of defies the logical brain’s common understanding of what a relationship should be.

Nancy: I always said that the key to dating somebody who’s a musician or an artist or anybody who does something creative, is that you just have to accept that you’re going to be number two, always. If you can be okay with that, then you’re fine. But it takes work regardless, relationships take work.

JS: Yes, just different work.

Nancy: You always have to put in an effort otherwise…

JS: So, you’ve figured it out sort of?

Nick: I don’t know that we’ve figured it out. It’s a work in progress. I think it’s great.

Nancy: That’s the thing, it’s not like you’ve figured it out, not like you’ve solved it and you’re like “okay, cool, we’re good” and you just glide along.

Nick: It certainly comes up.

Nancy: You’re always taking care of it. It requires constant maintenance.

JS: And so Nancy, you’re about to go on a long tour. Were you expecting LCD to get back together at some point?

Nancy: Yes and no. I was expecting it but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

JS: Was there ever a moment where you were thinking about it? Did you know that you wanted to jump back in?

Nancy: I’m still thinking about it. Everyday I reconsider. Is this really what I want to be doing? It’s complicated, but those five years between the last show and us playing again, that was a long five years. It was a long time for me to figure out who I was outside of LCD. I had spent so much time being in LCD and never really gave much thought into what I would do or who I was outside of the band, but all of a sudden I had to face this identity crisis.

JS: You won an award like best DJ in New York City?

Nancy: You know what, that’s just because I was in attendance.

JS: That’s great. Must’ve made you feel good?

Nancy: It was very sweet.

But just figuring out what to do, DJing, making music. Whatever. Just on my own with other people. It was a very long journey.

Nick: It’s a long five years of forming an identity outside of that band.

JS: And then one day James calls and says “hey let’s get the band back?”

Nancy: Yes.

JS: But the nice thing is, at that point, you have each other too, you were together. And that was cool.

Nancy: Right.

Nick: But having to put in all this work of figuring out what your life would be outside of the band and then all of a sudden — and you missed it — but you could have all your time occupied again.

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: So did you find you have a lot of free time during those five years and could do some things you weren’t able to do?

Nancy: No, but I did actually, at the end of last year, had amazing free time. I didn’t have anything to do, and I didn’t have to do anything. It was fabulous. But now that free time is going away.

JS: And when you guys got back together and played those first shows at Webster Hall, did it feel like “oh yes, this was the right thing to do?”

Nancy: It was fun. It was really fun. As much time had passed, it felt familiar and like no time had passed. Just back doing this again and it feels good, it’s fun, we like it, and we like each other, and we’re good at it, and we seem to be making other people happy.

JS: When some people were commenting that you guys should not have gotten back together after such a public end, did that affect you?

Nancy: It doesn’t really affect me, I don’t really give a shit. I mean I get it, it seemed like a strategy. But it wasn’t. I mean, I personally thought it was a little too soon, but now we’re here and it’s fine.

JS: How did you feel when you heard that that Nancy was going to go back to her job?

Nick: On one hand, I think I sensed it coming sooner than they did. On the other hand, I was very happy for her, and Pat in particular, because as much as I think the time off was really productive for them, there’s an obvious pride in being a member of that band. There was a certain spring lost from their step when the band went away.

JS: During the break, Pat formed his own band, Museum Of Love.

Nick: Yeah, which was great. I love that record.

Nancy was concerned about other things and I was concerned with whether or not she’d be happy. I think having some distance from a band allows you to focus on what you really want from being in the band. What do I need this to be? I think everybody in that band, James included, is better equipped to articulate and actualize what they want this to be. They’re also a bigger band now, so they have the power to manifest this thing.

JS: Can you have imagined that the band would become so big?

Nancy: No. Music was never anything that I aspired to do in any capacity, so everything from the very first thing until now — it’s all just like wow.

JS: When you get on stage in front of many thousands of people at these festivals, are you like “what am I doing here?”

Nancy: Sometimes. I feel very very lucky to be in this, particularly because it’s not something that I worked very hard to achieve. I mean, I worked hard, but it’s not like I was aspiring toward…

Nick: Unlike Al or James or Pat, who always wanted to be in bands.

Nancy: Yeah, since they were kids and picked up instruments, played in bands in their garages, I never did any of that. LCD’s my first band. So I feel very lucky. But I’m not fulfilling any premeditated goals that I had, so I can recognize that everything I do is an achievement. I would be just as satisfied had this thing never happened. Whatever this big show that we did.

Nick: And it was never your dream to play Madison Square Garden in the first place. Had that never happened you wouldn’t have…

Nancy: I wouldn’t have missed it. Having done it now, I’m like “that was amazing,” I’m really glad we did that.

JS: What’s happening with Holy Ghost! right now? Are you working on a new record?

Nick: We’re working on our retirement. We’re going to announce our break up.

JS: And then come back in a few years.

Nick: Yeah, we’re working on a new record very slowly but surely.

JS: And you two have recorded together here and there?

Nick: Yes.

Nancy: Do I appear on every Holy Ghost! album?

Nick: Not the new one. I don’t think you sang anything on any new stuff. But you’ve been on every other.

JS: And you DJ together?

Nick: Yep, DJ together quite a bit.

JS: Will there ever be a Nancy Whang solo record?

Nancy: That is the question for the ages.

JS: Is that something that you would like to do?

Nancy: I don’t know. On the one hand, yes, now that I’ve sort of grown accustomed to this life of being a musician and having musical aspirations, I like the idea of making my own stuff. But what happens after that is terrifying to me. And I’m not sure I want that.

Nick: That’s certainly terrifying to everybody for what it’s worth.

Nancy: Exactly.

JS: And you guys worked on a record by yourself, just the two of you?

Nick: We’ve talked about it.

Nancy: Family band.

Nick: Family band, we were talking about it this morning. Doris would play a horn in every song. We talked about it, but no more so than half joking. Making weird ambient synth records. Which is basically what we listen to at home.

JS: With so much going on in this country and the world right now, how do you feel about artists speaking their minds on these things? Artists making their feelings known?

Nancy: I do think it’s important. If you have something to say, you should say it. LCD isn’t necessarily a very political band, but there are things that we talk about amongst ourselves and if you have an opportunity, if you have a voice and a platform, then you should use it. Always, but especially now because shit’s gotten so bad. It’s really important to realize that we wouldn’t necessarily be at this place if people had been more engaged before.

JS: What are your feelings on it Nick, as far as Holy Ghost! goes?

Nick: I agree. But it’s not something Alex and I have talked about formally.

JS: He’s been pretty vocal on the internet.

Nick: He has been, but it’s not something that’s come up in the music we make. Is it insensitive to not address it? It’s just the nature of the music we make. It’s just kind of like fun. If it came about organically, Alex wouldn’t censor himself if he felt like he had something to say. But I also think there’s a place for music to be a relief from all that. And right now it’s coming from all sides. I spent a day not watching the news because my sister got married and it felt like I missed the entire war. “Oh you didn’t want the news today?”

Everybody has an obligation to speak out and shouldn’t censor themselves. If I’m most frustrated with anybody, it’s our side politically. Alex and I were talking about this yesterday, why there isn’t somebody on the left to come out and, in strong language, just be like “fuck these people, fuck anybody who is at this rally.” We don’t need to censor ourselves or be inclusive because we’re unequivocally “fuck these people, if you’re on this side you’re on the wrong side of history.” Trump made up this term yesterday, “alt left.” I wish there was an alt left, it doesn’t fucking exist. It’s the first time in my life I really felt a sincere rage on behalf of my family. Both sides have been in this country a really long time, but both my grandfathers fought in the second world war, neither of whom I would say are particularly liberal men, but they fucking fought in this war. If either of them were still alive today to see their commander in chief essentially playing nice with nazis…it’s fucking insane.

JS: How do you feel about how the internet has changed our lives so much?

Nick: Nancy and I are in a really unique position, we’re not on Facebook, we’re relatively…

Nancy: …disconnected.

Nick: It’s weird. In some ways I don’t have any great insights like “it’s made everybody’s lives better” In some ways, I think it’s made people shitty and entitled.

JS: As a DJ and producer, it can be pretty helpful?

Nick: It’s amazing. I don’t think I would have a career if it weren’t for the internet. The avenue for a niche thing to reach people directly didn’t exist when I was in high school. We were talking about it to our friend Jay, saying the first time I ever heard “Liquid Liquid” was on a Grand Royal record sampler that I got at a Beastie Boys show in high school. Then something happened with their reissue of it and I remember trying to find it but I couldn’t find anything about them, I couldn’t find those records anywhere, and it just sort of disappeared from my mind until later when the Mo Wax reissue came out. I missed that aspect of music being mysterious and having to search for things.

JS: Is there anything you guys are listening to now that you’re finding inspiring or just fun?

Nick: Coming back to a lot of music from my peripheral past, listening to a lot of Sonic Youth which was always a band that I really liked but was never my favorite band.

Nancy: Speaking of the 90s, Nick and I watch a lot of MTV classics now, which show a lot of videos from the late 80s early 90s.

Nick: Moderate pop hits.

Nancy: Early rap records, but then also like…

JS: Beastie Boys?

Nancy: There’s some Beastie Boys, but also Pebbles and that kind of dancey R&B that came out of the 80s

Nick: It’s been really fun to be reminded of them. The fact that it made it on MTV made it pretty successful, but somehow history has forgotten, it’s not as celebrated.

Nancy: Pebbles’ “Mercedes Boy.”

Nick: And some weird English stuff too. Post shoe gaze but all very electronic production.

Nancy: We saw this video of this band called Curve, and I’d never heard this song, but it sounded very much like that.

Nick: We were both like “Oh this is from Manchester in 1992.” And they were from Manchester and this song came out 1992.

Nancy: Yeah, just had a very…

Nick: …defined aesthetic.

Nancy: Jesus Jones, EMF kind of sound.

Nick: Baggy beats. Chorus of guitars.

Nancy: When I started listening to punk and indie, I rejected all that stuff at the time because I thought it was popular corporate music. But it’s good music.

JS: Do you feel a lot of pressure with this new LCD Soundsystem album coming out and how it will be received?

Nancy: Me, no. I feel no pressure. People are going to like it or they’re not going to like it.

JS: Are you really happy with it?

Nancy: I am. It’s weird. It’s different. Not wildly different, but different. It’s dark.

JS: Heavier record for a heavier time.

Nancy: I hope people like it so that we can continue to be a band.

JS: So there will be another one.

Nancy: Probably.

Nick: So not a good time to talk about the Shea Stadium retirement show.

Nancy: Exactly.

JS: Do you think it’s funny that with everything going on in the world that people are up in arms about the cover of your record, people not liking it or upset about it?

Nancy: This is one of the cons about the internet and what it’s becoming. People just have all kinds of free time to form all kinds of opinions and share all those opinions with everybody.

And again, I would prefer it if people liked stuff that we did and put out, but also “It’s done, sorry.” What am I supposed to do about it? That’s what it is. Take it or leave it.

Nick: One of the things I always admired about LCD is that there was always this sense that the band is never bigger than James. When bands get big there’s always this, “oh it’s out of my hands” and I felt, from an outsider’s perspective, that James really tried to not fall into that way of thinking. This band is only as big as me, no decision gets made without me being close to it. There’s a point where things just grow and they’re sort of out of your control and you kind of have to let them go. The band does become the idea not within your control anymore. That’s true of your band now, you put stuff out there, you put this cover out into the world, and it becomes an article on Newsweek. That’s just the way of the world now.

JS: Are you guys planning to get married?

Nick: We’re for it.

Nancy: We’re for marriage.

Nick: I don’t think we’ll have a wedding.

Nancy: I know we will not have a wedding. I know for a fact.

Nick: We’ve been through enough weddings.

Nancy: This last weekend was a wonderful event, but it drew a line under the fact that we don’t want to have a wedding. I don’t want to participate in that at all.

Nick: There’s been a lot of talk this week, “so what are we gonna do?” Justin, have you been to City Hall for a wedding?

JS: Yes, I was a witness a few times for friends.

Nick: It is really cool.

JS: It’s easy, you stand in front of that little painted sky they have. And then walk over to Chinatown and have a nice lunch.

Nancy: My brother got married at City Hall and we went to Joe’s Shanghai for dinner after they got married.

Nick: There’s something nice about being in this room, everybody’s experiencing the exact same thing, everybody’s in a pretty good mood, it’s nice.

Nancy: It was pointed out a few times that, for being in a government office, the mood was really good. Everyone was really happy, people were excited, people were being nice to each other.

Nick: Everybody’s dressed pretty nice.

JS: People get spiffed up.

Nick: I really like that aspect of it.

JS: Well if you need a witness you know who to call. I’ve got it down now.

Nick: We’ll let you know.

#lcd soundsystem #just/talk #nancy whang #holy ghost!#nick millhiser #justin strauss #nyc #new york #dance #dfa #juan maclean #yes #interview #justtalk

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hetmusic · 9 years ago

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A conversation with Strong Asian Mothers

Strong Asian Mothers are a London trio consisting of Kalim Patel, Josh Stadlen and Amer Chadha-Patel and over the past year, their music has been blowing up online, thanks to a mixture of pure energy, creative madness and numerous genres influences. Of course, the HumanHuman community had a head start thanks to The Undscvrd who unearthed this alternative project two years ago following a support slot for past successful discovery Jungle.

The band recently released their debut EP, Lynx Africa, which includes singles “Out Of Love” and “The More That I”, plus newer cut “Stay Down” and “Megabucket” that was resurrected from a previous project. If you like music to move to, then you’re really going to like Strong Asian Mothers.

Would you like to introduce yourself and what you do in the band?

Kalim: I’m Kalim Patel. I sing, I play keyboards and I shake a bit of tambourine.

Josh: I’m Josh and I play drums and that’s about it really! We all produce and songwrite in equal thirds as well, so I’m also a producer and writer.

Amer: I’m Amer, I also play keys and tambourine. I also play samples on the SPD and a cymbal.

K: A single cymbal.

A: Singular! I dance and sing for parts of the songs as well when I’m not playing anything.

Let’s talk about your band name, which is rather brilliant in itself and rememberable to say the least. Tell me, what’s the origin story behind it?

A: So, Khushi [Kalim] and I grew up together and both of our mothers and a lot of our friends’ mothers were part of a group of young, gunslinging, Asian women in London, either divorced or single or slightly left-field of the norm in the 80s and 90s.

J: Independent women.

A: Independent women, yeah! We grew up in a group of wild, free-thinking children with wild, free-thinking Asian mothers. It was a solid matriarchy. When we formed the band we decided to honour that by naming it after them.

K: It was his girlfriend who came up with the name.

A: My Suki came up with it, yeah.

K: From the first moment I heard it, I was like “yep!”

It’s good that she’s finally being credited!

K: She’s been credited in every interview!

A: And they cut it out every time.

That’s about how you two met, but how about all three of you?

J: Kalim and I went to sixth form together. We used to play in a rock band, and we were doing that for about seven years before we cottoned on to the fact that it wasn’t going anywhere. We stuck with it for quite a while, but yeah, when these guys started up Strong Asian Mothers, I wanted in! When we were in our old rock band The Mercers, there was one summer where we were going to do this hip-hop project. We planned to write four or five hip-hop tunes and then - rap! It was going to be a joke, like a parody, but then…

K: That’s how some of the best things begin, as a parody.

A: That’s how this band began, as a parody, we’re not a real band!

J: So then I did a remix of “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen, played it to Kush and Amer and they were like, let’s play this in Strong Asian Mothers. Then they asked me to play for them, and that was that!

I can imagine working as a trio involves plenty of compromise, but have there ever been any clashes over what you wanted the band to sound like?

A: [Laughs] every day!

K: That’s part of what makes us who we are, it’s the collaboration.

Yeah, and you said that you each take a third of everything.

J: Well, not always. We don’t always try to make sure that everyone has an equal third in every single song. We all write equally and for any song that is mainly from one of us, there will be another that is mainly from someone else. It all evens out. Yeah, there are clashes, but it’s healthy clashes.

A: I think we made a commitment to be part of a project where everyone is equally represented, so whether someone is a songwriter or someone is a frontman, it’s all irrelevant because every single thing that comes out of this project represents all three of us. It becomes a question of signing everything off as a trio, so even if Kushi writes a whole song, whether we’ve had any influence, we then decide if it’s something that actually represents us in a way that we want it to. I think that makes it better, because we only bring stuff to the table that we feel is appropriate. That comes from knowing these people for like fifteen years and more!

“I think we made a commitment to be part of a project where everyone is equally represented, so whether someone is a songwriter or someone is a frontman, it’s all irrelevant because every single thing that comes out of this project represents all three of us.”— Amer from Strong Asian Mothers

I guess that collaboration is why people might struggle to pin down a genre, because there’s so many different influences.

A: Yeah, definitely! But we love that.

K: Definitely, definitely.

J: All three of us have our own passions, especially music that we’ve grown up with and love. Amer in particular has the most ridiculously vast taste, like metal, which Khush and I don’t really like, but Amer loves it! Whereas I grew up listening to jazz, so I have this perverse jazz side of me that occasionally rears its head. Khush likes Top 40 pop music.

K: Yeah, I like the Now That’s What I Call music hits. Number 24, 97… you know all the legends like Britney, Christina Aguilera, Boyzone.

A: [Constant laughing] yeah, yeah, we’ve all got pretty eclectic tastes.

J: Amer definitely has the most eclectic.

A: It’s not a skill, it’s a flaw. This is not a competition!

What do you guys think about the music industry’s need to label and categorise everything?

K: It’s think it’s sick, man! I love that shit. Actually we did get a good genre description the other day.

A: From The Most Radicalist.

K: Hip-hop alt-pop. It rhymes as well! I think that’s the only genre I’ve ever heard that I’ve been satisfied with.

A: Yeah, we’ve been described before as alternative pop or chill electro...

I think it’s quite far from chill!

A: It’s very far from chill electro! On that subject, I think it’s kind of sad that everything has to be pigeon-holed, but everyone sees that for what it is.

J: I think it’s fine, because ultimately people are listening to the music and the genre that you’re labelled with becomes immediately irrelevant.

A: We usually just make up a new genre for every song.

K: We once told a group of people we met that we played “armchair stack”, which was just a phrase that we had invented. They were like, “we love armchair stack!”

A: Why did we invent that...? Oh yeah, we had loads of amps on an armchair once, so we made up armchair stack.

K: From that day on we lost faith in human nature.

A: What would you call us if you had to describe it?

If I had to… alternative dance-pop. Maybe!

A: Alternative dance-pop, add it to the list guys!

I find it really interesting, because so many bands seem to hate genre labels these days, but it’s good to see that you’re just embracing it and saying “give us whatever you’ve got!”

A: Yeah, we’ve only had one that has summed us up, and the other attempts haven’t quite. I think that’s because we know our sound is kind of all over the place, but in a good way, so nothing can really hurt us. It’s like if someone was like, “they’re goth clash!”, we would just be like, “Er, okay.”

J: I just don’t think it matters! If you feel that strongly about it, then maybe that’s because you have some kind of insecurity about your music being generic.

K: Burned up!

A: Woah, Josh is bringing the fire to the fans!

K: No, no, it’s exactly the thought that went through my mind as well.

J: For example, if we were making music that was quite derivative of Mumford and Sons and people were saying it sounds just like that, then I would be pissed, because I’d be like “oh it’s true, dammit!”

K: Yeah, or if you’re making indie-rock and everyone was only saying indie-rock, then we wouldn’t want to be that. I always find it quite interesting, just any attempts to put any genres on us. It doesn’t really bother me.

J: Also, most importantly, I don’t think it ever affects us and the way that we look at our music.

A: I was going to say, and it’s kind of a cliche, that we literally write most of this stuff for ourselves. That’s literally how it started. At no point we were like, “this is going to be a hit, so we’ve got to go in this direction with it.” It’s hard enough for us three to say it’s done, so by that point, it is whatever it is. There’s loads of tracks that clash with each other, but it works.

“At no point we were like, ‘this is going to be a hit, so we’ve got to go in this direction with it.’”— Amer from Strong Asian Mothers

You’re writing this project for yourselves, but have you been involved in other things before?

K: Oh yeah, well I’ve got a solo project, called Khushi Music.

A: Khushi’s coming back in a big way by the way. I’ve heard the new material, it’s utterly inappropriate for our band, but it’s great for him.

K: And Josh produces...

J: Yeah, I do a little bit of production for other people. I have a solo production project in an embryonic state, that will probably never be played to any other human ears. Other than that, there was The Mercers, that indie-rock band we used to be in. I also used to do session work as a drummer for other artists.

A: I’ve mostly been in wedding bands. I’ve played in like three wedding bands in my life, and they’ve all been amazing! I’m actually a filmmaker, that’s my job. I’ve been doing that forever, that was my career path, but music was always my passion. I’m also an actor, I’ve been in a lot of things, like small bit parts and commercials. Basically, fingers in pies.

K: He’s also a phenomenal DJ! AKA Chocolate Susan.

I haven’t noticed these little nicknames!

K: Yeah, so I’m K9, Khaotic, Kali-P, K-Twizzle.

A: They’re all variations of hip-hop names. Our wannabe hip-hop alter-egos! [Towards Josh] here we have Rogan Josh, Josh Posh Beats, J-Dillaworth.

J: That’s because my middle name is Dillworth.

A: I’m Chocolate Susan, Amer-change-your-life, Amer-millionaire.

K: Do we have to go on with those?

I think I’ve got enough! Strong Asian Mothers has been going for longer than your online presence would suggest, as two years ago, you played with Jungle. How did that come about?

K: I think that was just through our booking agent.

J: That’s decent knowledge by the way!

A: Yeah, on HumanHuman the first post is like two years ago talking about the Jungle gig and they’ve been tracking us since then.

So, what was it like to play with Jungle?

A: Well, we actually played after them.

J: Yeah, they were supporting us, technically.

A: They were amazing and we loved it, but then we had to go on after them which was terrible because they took all their lights away, so we had to go on a really empty stage and play not as famous music. It was really fun though.

Well more recently, we’ve been hearing “The More That I” and “Out Of Love”, but do you have a favourite track from the new EP?

J: “Stay Down” for me, personally.

K: There’s a video for “Stay Down” with a fifty-piece choir in it which we’re really happy with. There’s also a song on the EP called “Megabucket”. [To Josh] so, “Stay Down” is your favourite?

J: I think so, although “Megabucket” has a special place in my heart because it was originally a song that was played in a different band a lifetime ago. I used to play in a jazz hip-hop fusion band.

Did it have a name?

J: Erm, yeah… it had a name. We were called the J H Collective and we had a rapper and horns and it was jazzy.

K: Josh is a recovering jazz addict.

A: Can you say which famous people were in your band?

J: Yeah, we had Michael Kiwanuka playing guitar for us, Mark Crown who now plays trumpet for Rudimental, and rapping we had Jack Hughes and Street Journalist, who is now an actor in the Lion King on the West End. But yeah, “Megabucket” was one of that band’s favourites and it became something much better. It has found it’s home and it’s a beautiful thing to see that track released into the world finally.

A: You were so happy with that. It’s like nine years old that song. I think “Megabucket” is my favourite too.

I would say that my favourite is “The More That I”.

K: Mine too.

Yeah! Well for me it comes down to how the words add to the overall rhythm of the song, they’re snappy. I was wondering, does one of you take the lead with lyrics, or is that a collaborative process?

J: At the moment, most of the vocal content is from Kalim, although we’re all branching into writing vocals and lyrics, but Kalim has the most experience as a singer. [To Kalim] sorry, I’m speaking on your behalf!

K: It’s fine. On that point, it’s a funny thing for us because having being influenced by so much hip-hop, but feeling it might be awkward for us to rap… In “The More That I”, there’s an influence in terms of the importance placed on rhythm in the melody.

A: In “Out Of Love” too. It’s basically secret rapping.

“Out Of Love” is a song that seems to be about a break-up and all the feelings surrounding that. Why do you think that music so often comes back to this idea of falling in love, falling out of it and everything in between?

K: Because in our sheltered Western lives, it’s the most intense thing we will go through.

Woah, that is one quote right there!

A: That’s it, cut it there!

J: Anything you add to that is going to be an anti-climax.

K: True, true. It’s really easy to put down the feelings of love, but it is an intense thing that we all go through as human beings.

A: It’s also a really easy thing to feel comfortable to write about, because you know that people will understand. It’s a human feeling, and that transcends all creed, race, religion. You’re not putting too much on the line by singing about a subject that everyone can experience.

K: I guess it’s also different from a classic break-up song, which are like “oh fuck, my heart’s broken, I miss you.” I guess this is celebrating the other side of break-ups, which can be quite liberating and energizing. It can be a new chapter and a new lease of life if you’ve left a relationship that you felt was no longer right for you. There’s that side of break-ups too, which isn’t that commonly talked about.

To move on to something a little less intense, how on earth did you convince your mums to do the Mothers Interview?

A: Our mums, and this is something we learnt from the interview, they represent us quite easily, a little too well, and that was an embarrassing revelation for me! My mum couldn’t fucking wait. Straight on there, she was like “oh yeah, I’ll do that!”

J: I was absolutely convinced as soon as the idea came up that there was no way I was going to get my mum to do it. Since I’ve known her… [laughs] which is most of my life! She’s always hated having her photograph taken, but as soon as I mentioned it she was really up for it and she ended up being a star! She was amazing.

K: She’s an undercover comic genius!

J: What was the amazing quote? I think it was when the video came out and we shared it on Facebook and my mum saw it, she showed my dad because he doesn’t have Facebook.

A: Then she sent me a private message!

J: Yeah, she sent it to Amer, she didn’t even tell me! She sent Amer a private message saying… [starts laughing] my dad’s called Godfrey by the way, as a prerequisite to this story.

A: Josh’s mum messaged me saying, “Love the video. Thank you so much! Godfrey is tickled pink. You’re brilliant. Shout out to Amer Chadha-Patel and his tight swags.” [all three burst out laughing]

I also really, really loved the debate over plug-ins!

A: That was a last minute thing, so the way we did that is that we interviewed ourselves, transcribed the answers and gave it to our mums to just be us. We only gave them couple of things to talk about, but they ended up getting into an argument anyway!

It was pretty convincing! On that point, how do you think things like plug-ins and digital audio workstations are affecting the sound of current music?

K: In many ways it democratizing it, because otherwise it means you have to wait until you have loads of money behind you to get into a studio.

J: It levels the playing field, doesn’t it? Everyone is now releasing music in the same way.

K: As long as you can afford a laptop, because that’s not everyone, but it’s definitely more than can afford a studio. It also gives people more time to experiment and play around with sounds, because in a studio you have this fixed time where you have to write music mainly in the rehearsal room or on the run. Whereas now, you can construct it bit by bit and experiment. I think it’s an exciting new chapter.

A: It’s also teaching me to respect simple songwriting, because there’s so much on offer that I can kind of freak out with all the plug-ins and we have so many samples. You just have to remember that as long as the chord progression is good, and the lyrics and melody works, then everything else is just filler. You have to start with something good. I was listening to Q-Tip the other day, who I really love, and thinking this is so simple and really good. Or I’ll get in the car and I’ll be listening to J-Dilla with an amazing drum production and a really simple guitar line, and the only thing on top of that is vocals. In comparison to our music, it’s so simple! That is totally achievable with what we have, without any need to go as far as do. Learning to reign it in a bit has been the most valuable lesson for me. I can go fucking mental! And I have done, there’s so much stuff on my computer that’s just not for anybody. It’s basically the ramblings of a madman who likes metal and hip-hop.

J: As a production-based trio, it can be overwhelming and you can become obsessed with becoming a really technically accomplished producer and learning all the ins and outs of your DAW. You can get really hung up on that and it can become really problematic, because you stop focussing on what’s really important and start trying to sound like Flume and produce like Hudson Mohawke. I was recently reminded by a friend that the most important thing is to have really strong core content. The source material that you’re working from, whether that’s a really strong sample or chord progression or melody or vocal idea, that’s the most important thing and everything after that is filler.

A: On the flipside, and as the least technically adept musician in this band, I have an instinct for music and I really like it and I can write chords, but I’m not the best musician, but I’ve been able to get very, very far with DAWs. I’ve been able to achieve stuff with my computer that is remarkable for someone who can’t actually play music very well.

K: That’s a good point, because it’s also enabled me to do things I couldn’t have, because I’m not a technically advanced musician either. There’s a long-running condition in popular music of not technically advanced musicians just doing their thing, but it gives them their own style.

A: Like Michael Jackson.

K: Well, not really, he was a very technically advanced singer.

A: But he couldn’t really play any instruments, but he would write whole songs in his head. Imagine what he would have done if he had Logic!

I think it was really interesting that you’ve all said you have to find a balance between technicalities and sticking to your original goal. Referring back to the Mothers’ Interview, Amer’s mum outlines your aim as “to form a band where you could play at a party with relative ease and people would dance regardless of knowing it”.

A: You’re quoting my mum!

K: That’s the genre label we want, dance regardless.

Has that goal been achieved?

K: We’re on the way to achieving it.

A: No, I think we achieved it. I think we achieved it very early on, and we’re on changing our tune a bit. This band started with a few hip-hop beats Khush had written and a few instrumentals from me that we thought would be good to put on a backing track and then we could just take some top-line melodies and a couple of keyboards to play live. At that point, the sole aim was to make music for parties. We had no idea what we were, we would just dance along! That was the essence of dance regardless. Since then we’ve grown exponentially as actual songwriters.

J: I don’t think that’s our sole ambition anymore, to turn up at a venue and make people dance.

So, you’ve gone past the initial goal now?

J: Well, I think we’ve just adjusted what we want. That’s still definitely an important angle, we don’t want to turn up to gigs and play music that doesn’t move people in a physical way. I don’t think we’ll ever write any kind of music that doesn’t achieve that, but our aim includes other things now too.

A: That will always be an element of our songwriting, for the foreseeable future. We’re not likely to go in and write an acoustic song. Well, we might do at some point, but we’ll know if it’s right or wrong for the project, because we might not be defined by the idea behind the band which is to play boisterous party music.

For my last question, where can people go dance along to your music next?

A: We’re doing Secret Garden Party on the 22nd of July. Also Bestival, Cirque Du Soul, El Dorado Festival.

K: Anyone who lives in Beirut, we might be playing there too.

https://humanhuman.com/articles/interview-strong-asian-mothers

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mutoidman · 7 years ago

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Mutoid Man’s Pedals & Creative Process // Delicious Audio

PC: Jammi York

Sludgy, frenetic, and surprisingly melodic, Mutoid Man serves up nasty, heavy jams with a side of skilled riffage. Their latest release, War Moans, is 12-tracks worth of head spinning metal aptitude, so of course, we here at the Deli were very curious as to what kind of gear went into making their signature gut-busting sound. – by Olivia Sisinni

What feelings, events, people, records, inspired your latest album War Moans?

Feelings of joy, persistence, happiness, and gleeful rage are all present on War Moans. We found lots of musical inspiration from our peers on the road last year, sharing the stage with Baroness, Gwar, Converge, etc… and of course, when Chelsea Wolfe and Marty Friedman are down to collab on your album, it’s hard not to be stoked.

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Can you talk a bit about the themes that encompass this release?

The perversion of sex occupies our day-to-day in some shape or form, from product advertising to the the fact that any type of porn is accessible within seconds on our handheld devices. War Moansacknowledges this perversion and celebrates it having a home in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, continuing the tradition of this being a perfectly acceptable place for all forms of sexual expression.

Was there a person outside the band that had an important role in shaping your sound?

Kurt Ballou who recorded War Moans and also our previous album Bleeder is a good suck filter – we welcome his oftentimes blunt manner of guiding the production and occasional song writing, which usually leads to us doing better work.

Did you guys work on a new or improved guitar sound for this record, and, if so, what made everything click?

I played an Aria Pro II XX-MS 1985 Flying V with stock pick ups that I bought last year. It’s built for speed and really helps me wrangle the faster tempo stuff. We used the same amp on War Moans as we did with Bleeder – a Gibson Titan from the 60’s. This time we added more soundproofing foam in the live room to give the drum tracks greater isolation, and I think you can hear noticeable improvement in the overall mix.

How much of your distortion is amp and how much of it is pedals?

I like to dial in amp gain to the point of it sounding like speakers breaking up naturally, then I’ll add the external overdrive. If need be, I’ll push the amp gain harder when the floor needs extra shaking.

Tell us about your first time with… a guitar pedal. How old were you and what did you stomp on?

I started playing an acoustic guitar at age 12 and quickly became impatient to crank things up a notch with an electric. I remember driving with my folks to buy a used Rickenbacker practice amp… this thing was tiny and very basic but it didn’t matter – I was so excited to play through it, thinking “finally I’ll sound just like of all my favorite rock n roll and metal albums!” Of course when I plugged in, the sound was way cleaner than I’d hoped and the only way to get any gain was to pin every knob to 10 and strum the guitar as hard as possible – even then it provided soft gain at best. Several broken strings later, I’d managed to savesome paper route money and bought my first distortion pedal – the DOD American Metal, which I still own to this day. Game changer for sure! Recently I listened back to some cassette boombox recordings I’d made around that time and thought “This tone would be right at home on those early Hellhammer and Darkthrone albums”, both of which were way off my radar in 1993!

I still get nostalgic for the old Yamaha stereo Flanger pedal sound from the 80’s. It was the first “effect” pedal I owned and that was my way of exploring the feeling of how Nirvana used stereo chorus on “Nevermind”. Later on, I’d say discovering the Boss PS-3 was a major revelation, as it contains a particular setting which mirrors a distinct shimmery sound that’s existed deep in my musical imagination for several years. My band Cave In obviously exploited this sound to the degree in which Kurt Ballou now calls that pedal the “Caveinator” haha.

What do you have on your pedalboard these days?

Pictured above is my basic set up for Mutoid Man. Yellow tape arrows indicate the [Boss PS-5] Super Shifter quick octave up for piercing eardrums and a slowdiving octave down for brown note central. There’s a reverse delay for mild trippy ambience, flanger, octave down laser-like sonic intensity mimicking some intergalactic bass playing alien phenom , a sampler pedal for when I get lonely as the lone guitar player in a band and want some loopy company, octave up for more sharp frequency violence upon unsuspecting eardrums, and a (sexual) organ simulator for me to launch into “take me out to the ballgame” at any given moment.

What’s your favorite pedal on your board right now?

The [Electro-Harmonix] B-9 is pretty great as it tracks one’s playing super well – it’s also a happy medium for all the years I’ve said how badly I wanna take piano lessons.

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Are there any stompboxes you are itching to buy?

I’m looking to pick up an Eterna [a reverb from Mr. Black]. Also we used the Boss Vocoder all over War Moans to the point where it might actually be busted haha – I dig it so much that I’ll prolly buy a new one if that’s the case. Strymon is making some cool stuff. Also been getting back into messing around with envelope filter – I’m sure technology has come leaps and bounds since the DOD version from the early 90’s.

Are there any up-and-coming New York bands that you’re really excited about?

I think Sarahbeth from the band Tower has one of the most killer voices in the entire city.

FULL ARTICLE

#Mutoid Man #Sargent House #Delicious Audio

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eurosong · 8 years ago

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Eurosong's ESC '17 ranking and commentary

Good afternoon, folks! The clock is ticking down to the final and it's now about that time of the year where I unleash my commentary on all the songs. I tried to limit myself to a few sentences per song, but since there´s 42, this will doubtless be considered by some as a big read. Tongue in cheek in part but very candid about my views on some of the songs - don't proceed if you don't want to see a few songs savaged. As the ancient Romans said, de gustibus non est disputandum, and these are just my views and tastes.

1 Portugal From which planet did this extraterrestrial talent come and why do his people want to break our hearts so exquisitely? I cannot speak highly enough of these three perfect minutes of melancholy, longing, and yet, at the same time, love and hope. This performance speaks to the soul so intimately. It is a pure and timeless composition that I feel like I've known all my life, but have been waiting all this time to hear. Extraördinary and twelve cuts above everything else in the contest in my eyes. 2. Hungary How I love the fearless Magyars and their tendency to dance to the beat of their own drums, sending things that sound like nothing else in the contest. This is one of the most emotional performances in the contest and certainly one of the most meaningful lyrics - talking about the prejudice he faced as a Romani and the salvation he found in songwriting. The music is a sui generis blend of rap, traditional folk and other elements - and the pure passion invested into the lyrics and their delivery gives me goosebumps. 3 Belarus This is what three minutes of unshackled, care-free joy sounds like. Naviband are adorable, their chemistry pure, and their song is so full of joie de vivre. I feel like I’m out in the primordial forests of Belarus hearing the call of the ancients. 4 Armenia Another nation keen to exhibit its traditional music in curious new blends is Armenia, who this year bring us something that sounds at once distinctly Caucasian and East Asian. A curious mélange of genres and influences make this almost as far as you can get from the tired "Melfest reject" mould. I love the non-linearity of this song, and the æthereal feel that makes the song feel like a forgotten psalm to the gods. Great effort. 5 Iceland If you combine dark but infectious electro beats with some of the most subtly meaningful lyrics of the contest, you get this, in my book, one of Iceland's best contributions to the contest in some time. Svala's song is very personal to her and, through an extended metaphor, talks about struggling with accepting yourself for who you are. A very underrated track in my eyes.

6 Czechia Speaking of underrated, we have the perennially undervalued Czechs sending us one of the most understated and sincere offerings this ESC. Czechia's is a very subtle song about strength in adversity and human connection. The music is very pleasant, and the lyrics are sung with heart. 7 Belgium No matter the disastrous reaction to the rehearsals, City Lights remains for me one of the most unique and meaningful pieces in the contest this year. Whilst last year they sounded like a 90s girl group trying to emulate the 70s, this is year 3000, futuristic cool. There is a powerful minimalism in the lyrics that lets their many nuances sink in. "Are we going to lose it all?" 8 Romania You get instant ESC-snob credit by disavowing this Romanian effort, which on paper - a yodel-rap about breaking away from the 9 to 5 - sounds like it should be a ludicrous mess. But you won't see me doing anything but praising it as it is an instant ray of sunshine in a song. I love how much Alex and Ilinca, an incredibly cute pair, love their song and how they put their heart into each performance. I feel lifted up to the Alpine heights by each listen. 9 Azerbaijan For the first time ever, Azerbaijan stand to get into my top 10. They’re still raising my hackles by importing music from Sweden, but this time they’ve picked a credible and glacially cool artist with a mystifying and dark composition about obsessive love. A step in the right direction. 10 Italy The bookies’ favourite by far, and I can understand why - Francesco exudes cheeky chappie charisma and his song is one that can appeal across generations. Why only 10th then from this bonafide Italophile? I always found the chorus of the song to be very dated, sounding like the theme tune of an early 90s quiz show, whilst the verse and bridge has a much more monumental, anthemic air. I was more able to overlook the repeats of the chorus before they made disastrous cuts and excised most of the first verse and all of the second verse, leaving a song that is still fun, but a lot more repetitive. 11 Netherlands I’m honestly amazed that O’G3ne, a band with such a ridiculous name and a dubious pedigree, are on the cusp of my top 10 this year. They sing songs that are so dated that they wouldn’t have counted as fresh even in the early 90s. And yet, their song has a certain child-like naïveté in its lyrics about their ailing mother that it makes it unbelievably moving. 12 France A nice enough song from France this year, but nowhere near as good as Amir last year in my eyes. What really took the song down a notch was the clunky addition of unneeded, comparatively cacophonous English lyrics, which replaced the existentialist French chorus of the original with some throwaway clichés. 13 Macedonia Some fans consider the Macedonian entry fresh despite its reminding me of 3-4 different 80s’ songs blended together. What it is though is catchy and kitschy in a fun way. I have doubts about the live performance given her scandalous playback in London, though. 14 Finland As Holly Brewer sang, “I wish I loved you more.” I should love a song like this, but instead I don’t enjoy it as much as I might because I feel they put a distance between themselves and the audience not fitting for such an emotional song. 15 Ukraine It’s no secret that I’m a rocker, but unfortunately, a lot of the rock at the contest has been sub-par in recent years - or has been “rock” in inverted commas. This is not a bad effort from Ukraine, but nowhere near the britrock-inspired heights of Georgia last year. It’s a bit too repetitive for my likes. 16 Latvia Something less to my typical tastes is this unexpected piece of 90s rave revival, a step away from the cool Aminata-penned electronica Latvia has sent in the past two years. It’s a welcome stylistical oasis in a desert of identikit pop ballads, but qualitatively isn’t great, and her nasal, oddly pronounced vocals are an acquired taste which I am yet to acquire. 17 Bulgaria Very nice, relaxing background music but I don’t think of it as much more than that. 18 Ireland This starts out so promisingly with a gloomy and mysterious beginning, but soon degenerates into an early 2000s B-side that was not only rejected by Westlife but also by an assortment of C-list bands imitating Westlife. It’s even complete with the obligatory key change that launches young Brendan into a register so high that it could shatter contact lenses while they're still on your eyes. Yet, I do find some charm in it, and this would be a contender for places 11-15 for me were it not for the god awful last minute. 19 Albania For once, Albania don’t completely destroy a song in its revamp - they maintain most of the rock-ish edges of the original, instead of neutering them like they did with Përallë. As is typical, though, they lumbered Lindita with a bewildering and clunky English translation that takes a lot of my enjoyment away from the song. 20 Germany This couldn’t be more middle of the road if it tried - so it’s apt, I guess, that it has a position almost precisely in the middle of my ranking. Levina was the best of a bad lot in Germany’s insane format of a national final and she soldiers through a song even she seemed like she preferred not to sing. The riff ripped from Titanium is so blatant - and the song is brought down too by some ridiculous lyrics. “Almost a sinner, nearly a saint.” So you’re almost exceptionally holy and almost someone who frequently sins at the same time? *Head explodes* 21 Switzerland An innocuously bland mid-tempo pop ballad. Not much to say about this one. 22 Croatia A man singing a duët with himself, giving a motivational message - to himself. One half in the quivery, syrupy upper ranges of an R&B tenor, the other half in a booming operatic baritone. It’s as ridic as it sounds and yet this Jeckyll and Hyde act is saved from the very bottom by its endearing barminess. 23 Denmark Disposable pop with a shout-sung chorus, albeit by a performer with some charm and connection to the audience. 24 Australia Musically, not so bad at all, but there’s something offputting about a chap young enough to almost be fœtal putting on a drippy voice and ridiculous puppy dog eyes, singing a song of a life of broken hearts and lost love more befitting of an old man. 25 Serbia Serbia used to be one of my favourite countries in the contest. They stuck to their own language and sang songs imbued with Balkan rhythm and tradition... now they send someone sending a poor rip-off of Katy Perry’s Firework. Каква срамота. 26 Moldova Evidently, meme status can open doors and can gift you a return ticket to the ESC. It’s a shame, as even in Moldova, there were better options than this rather misogynistic effort that seems to have been Bing translated, not even Google translated, and which sounds like it was based off a MIDI ringtone. Apparently bound for the final just because it’s upbeat. 27 Austria This exudes that relentless forced cheeriness that makes my blood run cold. It’s such a plim-plom song that bounces along whilst saying nothing. Most songs aim for the top and I can admire that, even if they have no chance - this aims for mid-table mediocrity in the final. 28 Israel Generic dance track with words plucked at random and thrown onto the paper. 29 Norway Robotically cold. Most songs make me feel something, even if it’s annoyance. This just leaves me numb. 30 Poland An oppressive dirge with lyrics that rely on a rhyming dictionary a little too much (rhyming fire, desire, wire and higher in the space of ten words!) and a bizarre song structure with an anti-chorus and no real progression, which make these 3 minutes feel very long indeed. 31 Sweden Predictable, repetitive pop with one of the most laughable performance routines (blokes trying to act “smooth” by doing very silly gestures) and lyrics that read as though written by Jay in the Inbetweeners. Let’s not romanticise uncontrollable lust. 32 Cyprus A rip-off of Rag and Bone Man’s “Human”, but without a message. Instead, some incredibly daft lyrics written by someone who failed physics even in primary school. Hovig likens himself to gravity because he will catch his paramour when she falls - when it is in fact gravity that pulls her down to her grizzly death. 33 United Kingdom Turgid rent-a-ballad delivered in a hammy style with not a whisker of sincerity - compare that with the virtuoso performance of her rival in the final, Holly, who sang like she felt the pain. I’ve been saying since the contest that it will do well, though, but I’m not sold one bit. 34 Spain Many of us Eurovision fans in Spain wasted money voting for other songs in the national final, only to find that the jury - 2/3 comprised of people with vested interest in one of the candidates - was able to override thousands of televoters when it came to a draw. They put the televote’s 3rd place, Manel, first, leaving a considerable bad taste behind. And what for? One of the most inane songs the contest has ever seen, in which either “do it for your lover” (do what?) or “just do it” are repeated on average less than every 4 seconds. It sounds like a homebrand Lazy Song and the songwriters sure were lazy. Playing this on a loop for just 15 minutes could make even the toughest commandos cry for their mammies. 35 Estonia Part of me wants to put this at the very bottom of the pile, but sadly, there are worse horrors yet to come. It’s really disappointing when your favourite ESC country in recent years throws aside a bunch of daring possibilities to represent them in 2017, in favour of something so aggressively bland, a cynical Eurosong by numbers with hackneyed, ultra-repetitive lyrics that mostly consist of entoning “á-a-a-a-à-a-a-a-á-a”, performed by a duo who have as much chemistry as two inert gases and spent most of the time hammishly gurning. 36 Montenegro How does one interpret it when one of the European countries with the biggest problems of homophobia - with 71% of the populace thinking homosexuality is a sickness and where a number of hate crimes have been registered just against people who support LGBT rights - sends such an OTT act with lyrics that are packed to the brim with single entendres? For me, it seems a cynical move. Slavko himself seems a cool guy but the song itself is a hot mess. 37 Lithuania And this is a hot mess, frozen then microwaved, then frozen then set on fire with a flamethrower. Be careful of watching this with pets or small children or they may well end up traumatised for life. Whilst unbelievably sweet in interviews, the lead singer of this act seems like a banshee possessed by demons whilst singing. Her bandmate seems like her creepy “keeper.” They sing a song with about 180 instances of the words “yeah, yeah” and some trumpets that sound like they were taken from Windows 95 sound effects. 38 Slovenia This has to be one of the most overblown and pompous entries in many a year. Omar claims he was waiting to unleash this on the unsuspecting public for over a decade - even back then, this grandiose attempt at a Broadway-style number would have sounded dated. 39 Greece I will never forgive the genius lyrics “rain falls from abooove!” Neither can I forgive the fact that such a completely generic track with lyrics written on the back of a Cornflakes box is probably destined for the final with the help of some gimmicky staging. 40 Malta This song fills me with all the energy of someone who’s been in a coma for 15 years. 41 San Marino Some folk are happy to see Valentina Monetta back for the fourth year. I’m sad to see a talented performer come back for scraps of infamy no matter how bad the song she’s offered. And my god, is this disco rehash fever dream bad. 42 Georgia Georgia is typically one of my favourite nations in the contest, because of their willingness to break away from the mould, to enter things that are very atypical of the contest and often do well with them - like the exhilerating psychadelic-Britrock of last year or the trippy folk of a few years before that. This year, they couldn’t have gone more off into the other direction, into the methane-scented hinterlands of mediocrity. I find this song disasteful in so many ways. The overt and ham-fisted political nature of it. The creepy music, like the soundtrack to a cheap straight-to-VCR horror movie, which creates an oppressive atmosphere that makes me feel like the music is holding my head down under the ghoul-infested waters of a frigid lake in a winter forest. The ghastly, cliché-ridden lyrics, where “keep the faith” is repeated so many times that by one minute, my faith that the song will ever end is already shaken. Ugly composition.

#eurovision #eurovision song contest #esc 2017 #eurovision 2017 #review

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fuckyeahevanrwood · 8 years ago

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Rebel and a Basket Case

Evan Rachel Wood, known for her leading role as a heroine and oldest host in the HBO Original series Westworld, as well as her roles in films Thirteen, The Wrestler, TV series True Blood and the mini series Mildred Pearce. Her covetable award-winning catalog of acting roles barely highlights her deep rooted musical background she evolved at a very young age.

We get a squint of her prolific vocal talent as the star of the 2007 musical film ‘Across the Universe‘ as she covers 1960’s Beatles songs.

Fast forward to 2017; Evan and Zach chat with novelist Laura Albert about the inspiration for their debut album and the journey of writing songs whilst juggling an intense acting career.

Rebel and a Basket Case an edgy, 80’s inspired electro –pop duo who are reclaiming inspirational moments from their teenage music icons, The Breakfast club, Karaoke and verve for all that is a unicorn world.

Interview by Laura Albert

Laura: I very much love Westworld. Has the unfurling story which seems a constant peeling back of identity, seeped into your musical world?

Evan: Zach and I wrote a lot of the album while I was in production and while we were on a short hiatus. Playing that character definitely gave me a new found strength that trickled over into our music I’m sure. So many themes on the record have to do with overcoming oppressive situations and West World is very much the same.

Laura: Your music has an uplifting message — it understands suffering but offers support to lift others out of darkness. It brings to mind a quote from my mentor David Milch, “You know, people say that my writing is dark. And for me it’s quite the opposite. It sees light in darkness and it doesn’t try to distort darkness. The essential thing is that the seeing itself is joyful.” It seems like you share this philosophy – would be great to hear both your thoughts.

Zach: Yep. I’m all about being present in the journey. One of the greatest life lessons I’ve ever learned is that you “can learn just as much from a ‘bad’ experience, as you can a ‘good’ experience.” So either way, you are balancing the scales and moving “forward” more than anything. That is cumulative. That’s unstoppable. And growth is independent of how enjoyable a particular life challenge or experience is. So, I think we capture that in our music. There is always pain and hardship that comes along (eventually) in tandem with the greatest joy. That’s the spice of life. We all want to be happy. But those moments when we are not or challenged is when we learn the most about ourselves…and carry that knowledge forward allowing us to enjoy our happy moments all more the deeply.

Evan: A lot of the lyrics that I pulled out of my arsenal came from a time when I was suffering, heartbroken, oppressed, misunderstood, and generally teetering on madness. The fact that I made it out and feel like a better person for it taught me a lot. Especially because my work in film is usually really heavy and dramatic I felt I would drain myself if the music I made was similar. I wanted our songs and lyrics to acknowledge the struggle but also say, “Hey, you aren’t alone and it’s going to be ok. You will survive.” Making uplifting and empowering music can sometimes be more challenging. Just like it’s easier to take an insult rather than a compliment. I think especially where we are in the world right now, people know things are hard, people know things are bad, I feel like we need to be reminded that we can overcome.

Laura: You were brought together collaborating on music, can you tell us more about that, and how you both felt it was a fit worth exploring.

Zach: Originally, this tune I had written sounded pretty lame with my vocals in the lead…enter Evan. She has an amazing gift both as a vocalist, and as a writer, which I discovered later. Her talent was apparent, but when it seemed like our collaboration gave her a stage to fully explore the writer inside of her, I happy obliged. That she feels comfortable with me in that regard is an honor, and a pleasure. Her turn of word never ceases to amaze me, and opened me up musically to explore different territory. It’s incredible to work with her, see how her mind works, and see the connections she makes to music emotionally. And her explosiveness and dynamic ability as a performer is hard to rival. Which is lovely, because I have looked a long time for someone who can give me a run for my money in the performative arena. I think we push each other, and complement each other equally. That’s why it works.

Evan: Music was always my first love. I held it in such high regard and it was so precious to me I couldn’t even bring myself to put my own out in the world because I wanted it to be perfect. Linda Perry heard me sing, reached out to me and became a sort of mentor. She gave me that little push I needed and the confidence to just start, it didn’t have to be perfect. Once that door was open I started working with Zach on this play we did together and we started talking about music. We not only had great chemistry but it seemed like we had the same vision for what we wanted to achieve, not just musically but the general concept. We both loved androgyny, glam rock, and were born in the 80’s raised in the 90’s so we have a lot of the same influences stylistically. Zach was the first person I felt comfortable enough with to be vulnerable and share my writing and melodies. He was really patient and nurturing and it felt safe. Once those barriers were down it was like we couldn’t stop making music, it flowed so freely and naturally. Zach is incredible with the little details and he can hear things I just don’t. He is also the hook master!

Laura: I dig how your band name is taken from the stereotype-labels from John Hughes’ Breakfast Club — there is a power in taking on a label and owning it. When I was a kid, my mom taught be about the Chinese finger puzzle, a straw tube you put your fingers into. If you try to pull your fingers out, it tightens around your fingers. The only way out is in: when you press your finger deeper inside, then it magically opens. As public figures, so many tags or typecasting can get thrust on you. But you are both freely exploring a variety genres, but ultimately it feels like you are inviting the audience to go deeper than the label or category — and by doing so, you can follow any rule want. Do you feel free to explore any genre of music with Rebel?

Evan: I feel like we have so many influences and what I love about our first record is that it all fits together but it shows a vast range. We were exploring and finding different parts of ourselves musically as a band and I think that reflects in a cool way on this album. I also think you need to keep reinventing yourself as an artist because as people we don’t stay the same, we grow and evolve so that can’t help but be mirrored in what you create. I am hoping we are able to show many sides of who we are as artists while keeping the integrity of our vibe and mission.

Zach: With Ev on this one. As a writer, I am fairly disrespectful of any kind of genre restrictions. Of course things need to sound cohesive, and we definitely have an aesthetic as RB&C but, rules are made to be broken. And music in this era we are in is so fluid. Which mirrors what we are seeing movement wise as a culture. With structure comes freedom. No fear to explore.

Laura: Zach, it’s awesome how varied your creative outlets have been, did anyone every try to dissuade you from being so expansive in your artistic endeavors or outlets? Zach did you always know you wanted to make music?

Zach: Yes. Pretty much a LOT of people tried to dissuade me. They all had the best intentions, thinking that they were doing me a favor in their advice to streamline my energies… that I would be more focused on one thing, give move to just acting or dancing etc, and clear the field and my calendar. Unfortunately, that often backfires in modern society, and gone are the days of the Greeks, Romans, and MGM Pictures when we encouraged artists (and people) to be well-rounded ; confident that the X-training in experience would yield more interesting and varied results. So, in short I told those individuals thanks but no thanks. I wouldn’t be the musician I am today without the extensive background I have in dance, acting etc. They all feed one another.

Laura: How do you form your fashion sensibilities? They seem very playful.

Zach: I like clothes that elevate an aesthetic. That allows me to feel like I can transcend the norm and connect to something ethereal. Like lights and glitter. Evan?

Evan: I always view my alter ego ‘Basket case’ as just a heightened version of myself. Like when you go to burning man and you are allowed to create whatever character you want that would normally raise a few eyebrows on the streets. Thats why music and rock n roll have always been so alluring to me, it represented full expression and freedom. We also want it to reflect our message which is ‘be loud and proud and who you are and have fun doing it!

Laura: What are your tour plans? Your music has a cinematic edge to it, would you be interested in creating soundtracks for films together?

Zach: We are playing regionally as much as possible and focusing on our unicorns on the West Coast. We are playing a Pride fest in Chicago and Oslo in June. Soundtracks for films? Absolutely….. lock me in a room with synth pads and a picture with lots of coffee any day.

Evan: I am actually directing my first film this spring so you might hear a couple of new tunes from R&BC in there.

Laura: Evan, when I became a parent, a fierce new kind of advocacy blossomed in me – I needed to protect and advocate for this child, and I would do what ever that required. With the art I created right after my son was born, I felt a not-dissimilar form of advocacy that was new in me. Not just for my art, but the idea of this child going through any of what I had experienced — sexual and physical abuse — chilled me to my core. I knew I could not shield him from suffering, but I felt that, by giving a voice to what had happened, by telling and raising awareness, I could perhaps make the world safer for him. Did you experience anything like that?

Evan: Absolutely. I feel like it is my duty as a person and as a mother to be honest about my journey to help people on theirs. I hope I can set a good example for my son in that way. There is no shame.

Laura: Film acting reminds me of writing, in that there is no direct contact with the audience at the moment of creation. What I loved about making music was feeling locked in with an outside energy and not being alone, feeling that there could be a transmigration of spirit. When you sing, there is a sense that you are going to the depth of your being to bring connected emotion into being. Do you feel that music allows for more of felt or immediate shared sense of experience than your acting does?

Evan: Yes, it’s like doing theatre you get an immediate response from the audience. No matter how many times you rehearse, the second you are confronted by your audience everything changes, you feed off of their energy and go to another place. You lift each other up and the connection is palpable and immediate. Seeing people dance and sing to something that came from your soul which in many ways is your soul, there are no words to describe it. Feeling like you are raising people’s spirits and turning something painful into something joyous is why I do it.

Laura: From your tweets to your interviews, it seems you are inviting others to move out of where they might be stuck, to come alive in their compassion, to move past an illusion of isolation of self. Do you think of directing and writing as other tools for you to take problems of our soul and spirit and transform them into issues of craft, so that others might care about what they did not care about before?

Evan: All the art I make is to release my feelings and express myself in ways I can’t otherwise. It’s why I call myself an artist because it’s just something I have to do in some way or another to survive. It’s like air to me. I don’t know what I would without it. If by doing that and being honest wakes people up and makes them view themselves and the world in a way they hadn’t before, if breaks down walls and opens up doors then I have done my job well.

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