http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9lkxq7tGuY
Roses — the actual song of which starts at about 1:00 in, in the video above — is magnificent. OutKast at the height of their ambition, half Prince/Michael Jackson, half hip-hop; a West Side Story parody, a hate-song (instead of a love-song); call-and-response, full of visual puns, set as a high school, funny and dramatic and an incredible song to boot. I don't know much about Andre 3000 and Big Boi, but I know that Roses was from Andre's half of their dueling double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. And that jazz intro!
Moreover, the song is addictive; it hits a certain timbre in my ear that can't get enough of it. The tone of Andre's voice, the organ and steady, slow drum beat; the call and response from Big Boi; the micro-repetitive patterns and subtleties to the lyrics and melodies; the variations on a theme; it's all perfect.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Retrograde — James Blake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6PcFFUm5I
James Blake is a mystery; so many artists choose to be these days. He smirks behind strong, decisive neo-soul beats, and the music swells until all you can hear is his voice, drowned out by its own echoes. I'm never sure what he's saying or what he means, but his voice is beautiful, and all is forgiven. And the video is the same; there's a biker who fell from space; a house suspended with bits of rock; the biker comes in and out and inspects during a frozen time; perhaps there's a meteorite, suddenly I'm hit; it's dark and dramatic, but with no rhyme or reason, only a strong emotional impulse, an impulse not to communicate and share, but an impulse to get something out, something weird and dark and brilliant inside yourself, and the only way to get it out is to sing these strange drone-electronica songs, and to ask and tell people what it means. I haven't got a damn clue what it all means. Do I want to? As long as he wants to, I think it's all okay.
James Blake is a mystery; so many artists choose to be these days. He smirks behind strong, decisive neo-soul beats, and the music swells until all you can hear is his voice, drowned out by its own echoes. I'm never sure what he's saying or what he means, but his voice is beautiful, and all is forgiven. And the video is the same; there's a biker who fell from space; a house suspended with bits of rock; the biker comes in and out and inspects during a frozen time; perhaps there's a meteorite, suddenly I'm hit; it's dark and dramatic, but with no rhyme or reason, only a strong emotional impulse, an impulse not to communicate and share, but an impulse to get something out, something weird and dark and brilliant inside yourself, and the only way to get it out is to sing these strange drone-electronica songs, and to ask and tell people what it means. I haven't got a damn clue what it all means. Do I want to? As long as he wants to, I think it's all okay.
I'll Be Gone — Mario & Vidis feat. Jazzu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pka3c67_MF4
This song is so absent and empty emotionally, and yet so full in timbre; it shuffles and shudders under its own weight; the claps and reverbs trickle off into pattering in the background, and the synths swell and subside; the vocalist breathes heavily before ever singing. When she does, it's resigned and apathetic, a dance beat to get out a notion of riddance. And it's bittersweet, but it's mostly bitter; the music stays light, but there's an underlying darkness. The video draws out the instruments in seismometers tracing blood onto graph paper; as the music goes on, it begins to float off the page; nothing is permanent.
This song is so absent and empty emotionally, and yet so full in timbre; it shuffles and shudders under its own weight; the claps and reverbs trickle off into pattering in the background, and the synths swell and subside; the vocalist breathes heavily before ever singing. When she does, it's resigned and apathetic, a dance beat to get out a notion of riddance. And it's bittersweet, but it's mostly bitter; the music stays light, but there's an underlying darkness. The video draws out the instruments in seismometers tracing blood onto graph paper; as the music goes on, it begins to float off the page; nothing is permanent.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Not In Love — Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32udqal_lyQ
Something about this song hits me like a ton of bricks. In content, it's a break-up song, about the end of a relationship and the inability to reconcile the gap between people; in tone, it's an anthem, a heart-pounding electronica dance mix; in context, I used it heavily in my own life as a love song, ironic and bittersweet and decontextualized; the song, already all but bereft of emotional content, gained only more. And Robert Smith, emerging from semi-retirement to perform guest vocals on a weird Canadian electronica track, he lends context too; suddenly this track is tied irrevocably to the entire catalogs of The Cure, and all the emotional weight that carries. And the song pounds on and on, and he's not in love, he's fallen out, and there's no rhyme or reason to why; it's part of his life, he'll carry on, but he doesn't have to be happy about it.
Something about this song hits me like a ton of bricks. In content, it's a break-up song, about the end of a relationship and the inability to reconcile the gap between people; in tone, it's an anthem, a heart-pounding electronica dance mix; in context, I used it heavily in my own life as a love song, ironic and bittersweet and decontextualized; the song, already all but bereft of emotional content, gained only more. And Robert Smith, emerging from semi-retirement to perform guest vocals on a weird Canadian electronica track, he lends context too; suddenly this track is tied irrevocably to the entire catalogs of The Cure, and all the emotional weight that carries. And the song pounds on and on, and he's not in love, he's fallen out, and there's no rhyme or reason to why; it's part of his life, he'll carry on, but he doesn't have to be happy about it.
Everything Is Everything — Phoenix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFVeSefg72U
Good pop — pop that doesn't make you feel guilty for liking something popular; pop that isn't simply dumb; pop that isn't about sex or clubs — pop that is about a mood and a feeling, this is rare pop. Old Phoenix, before they were incredibly famous, when they were a little alt-rock outfit from Versailles, this was good, rare pop. And it is — you can choose to listen to the lyrics. They're mostly meaningless, and they know it. And the chords are nothing special, and the instrumentation has some nice jazz chords and surprisingly complex rhythms, but those aren't the reasons we like pop. We like pop because it strikes just the right balance between predictable rhythms and tones and new, fresh timbres. We want to be tickled — not pained, not to have to strive to pay attention, and not to be bored. Listening to this song, I'm tickled. It's cute and charming and interesting; there are four guitars weaving in and out, the acoustic guitar providing some great rhythms, there's dynamics, but moreover it just works.
Good pop — pop that doesn't make you feel guilty for liking something popular; pop that isn't simply dumb; pop that isn't about sex or clubs — pop that is about a mood and a feeling, this is rare pop. Old Phoenix, before they were incredibly famous, when they were a little alt-rock outfit from Versailles, this was good, rare pop. And it is — you can choose to listen to the lyrics. They're mostly meaningless, and they know it. And the chords are nothing special, and the instrumentation has some nice jazz chords and surprisingly complex rhythms, but those aren't the reasons we like pop. We like pop because it strikes just the right balance between predictable rhythms and tones and new, fresh timbres. We want to be tickled — not pained, not to have to strive to pay attention, and not to be bored. Listening to this song, I'm tickled. It's cute and charming and interesting; there are four guitars weaving in and out, the acoustic guitar providing some great rhythms, there's dynamics, but moreover it just works.
Friday, March 29, 2013
And So It Goes — Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcUCYtyaLrY
This is a song I first heard performed by The Duke's Men of Yale, a collegiate a cappella group. They did it slow and somber, and I thought it was a slowed-down treatment of an 80s pop song; I looked it up with the key lyric 'this heart to break'; and found it was truly a slow and gorgeous Billy Joel song. A Billy Joel song without the strappings of a Billy Joel song; no arpeggio piano exercises, no dramatic strings, no New-York-in-the-80s vibe; it's about love and loss, and it's sweet and sad and slow and hopeful, and it's perfection. For an artist like Billy Joel to take a break from his intensities for a ballad without pretenses, this is a remarkable song.
This is a song I first heard performed by The Duke's Men of Yale, a collegiate a cappella group. They did it slow and somber, and I thought it was a slowed-down treatment of an 80s pop song; I looked it up with the key lyric 'this heart to break'; and found it was truly a slow and gorgeous Billy Joel song. A Billy Joel song without the strappings of a Billy Joel song; no arpeggio piano exercises, no dramatic strings, no New-York-in-the-80s vibe; it's about love and loss, and it's sweet and sad and slow and hopeful, and it's perfection. For an artist like Billy Joel to take a break from his intensities for a ballad without pretenses, this is a remarkable song.
Eloy — Deaf Center
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Shx98a7rU
Deaf Center is Norwegian, ambient, neoclassical, weird and quiet and lush and incredibly creepy. It's music for something-is-about-to-happen and it's music for think-on-your-sins; it's music for take-a-walk-at-night-when-you-shouldn't and it's music for keep-working, keep-your-head-down, keep-calm. It's especially music for meditation; it's drone and slow and horrid and peaceful; dramatic without being melodramatic; intentioned and controlled yet expressive; dark and sinister but without the cruelty or horror of most dark ambient. It's not about death or disease or war, it's not about sadness. It's about what kinds of sounds evoke a reaction, and it's incredibly successful.
Deaf Center is Norwegian, ambient, neoclassical, weird and quiet and lush and incredibly creepy. It's music for something-is-about-to-happen and it's music for think-on-your-sins; it's music for take-a-walk-at-night-when-you-shouldn't and it's music for keep-working, keep-your-head-down, keep-calm. It's especially music for meditation; it's drone and slow and horrid and peaceful; dramatic without being melodramatic; intentioned and controlled yet expressive; dark and sinister but without the cruelty or horror of most dark ambient. It's not about death or disease or war, it's not about sadness. It's about what kinds of sounds evoke a reaction, and it's incredibly successful.
House of Cards — Radiohead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ
This is a song that's been troubling me for a few weeks: every time I sit down to try and say something about it, it comes out more or less complex than I'd like. Some days it's a simple song about sex and seduction, wanting to hook up and leave it at that. Some days it's an encapsulation (thanks, CS125) of nightlife and modern society. Some days (nights, mostly) it's an anthem of sorts, asking to be reconsidered. I don't know what to make of Radiohead — I love them, I think they're great, but I can't say why. The complex musicality is impressive but not exceptional, the lyrics are poetry but don't seem like they'd be any good simply on paper; the instrumentation is unpredictable, Thom Yorke's voice is unusual, it shouldn't work. Each element shouldn't work, but together it absolutely does. I think that's the monument here, is that House of Cards is a pop song by a band that hates pop. If this were a song by old-school Phoenix, it'd be immensely popular, played on Chuck back in 2005, appearing in car commercials, played at high school parties. But it asks to be more mysterious, so we leave it alone.
This is a song that's been troubling me for a few weeks: every time I sit down to try and say something about it, it comes out more or less complex than I'd like. Some days it's a simple song about sex and seduction, wanting to hook up and leave it at that. Some days it's an encapsulation (thanks, CS125) of nightlife and modern society. Some days (nights, mostly) it's an anthem of sorts, asking to be reconsidered. I don't know what to make of Radiohead — I love them, I think they're great, but I can't say why. The complex musicality is impressive but not exceptional, the lyrics are poetry but don't seem like they'd be any good simply on paper; the instrumentation is unpredictable, Thom Yorke's voice is unusual, it shouldn't work. Each element shouldn't work, but together it absolutely does. I think that's the monument here, is that House of Cards is a pop song by a band that hates pop. If this were a song by old-school Phoenix, it'd be immensely popular, played on Chuck back in 2005, appearing in car commercials, played at high school parties. But it asks to be more mysterious, so we leave it alone.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Ambrose Akinmusire — When The Heart Emerges Glistening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QZ5chS_by8
I have some musician friends who are constantly talking about how they saw some show or other and how they hated it because it wasn’t “real jazz”. This is generally my cue to listen to that performer and enjoy it very much. Aside from accused contrarian hipsterness, I find that this method works for me because it helps me tap into new ideas.
“This guy name ambrose akeenmooseer? He’s literally the worst musician I’ve ever heard” yes please.
Ambrose has a voice that is everything that is great about the classics and everything that is great about the nouveau “what the fuck” stuff. It’s limitless expression in a context that I can grapple with. It isn’t coated in the neoclassical like some stuff that my aforementioned friends would dig, but rather lightly dusted.
I love the looks on their faces when I tell them that Ambrose studied with all of their “real jazz” idols.
I have some musician friends who are constantly talking about how they saw some show or other and how they hated it because it wasn’t “real jazz”. This is generally my cue to listen to that performer and enjoy it very much. Aside from accused contrarian hipsterness, I find that this method works for me because it helps me tap into new ideas.
“This guy name ambrose akeenmooseer? He’s literally the worst musician I’ve ever heard” yes please.
Ambrose has a voice that is everything that is great about the classics and everything that is great about the nouveau “what the fuck” stuff. It’s limitless expression in a context that I can grapple with. It isn’t coated in the neoclassical like some stuff that my aforementioned friends would dig, but rather lightly dusted.
I love the looks on their faces when I tell them that Ambrose studied with all of their “real jazz” idols.
b1 — Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2uKFrJrS8
I was sent this song, and clicked the link; the first impression: oh, god, it's thirteen minutes, how am I going to listen to a thirteen-minute neoclassical song, but I can't just reject this outright, and it starts playing, and it sounds repetitive; it sounds repetitive and it keeps sounding repetitive, and then it kind of tricks you into minding it carefully, and you find little patterns and subtleties and suddenly it's been five minutes and you don't really mind, and you can't stop listening, the patterns and the repeating beats are as natural as silence alone would be, you feel like you'll lose something if you turn it off, it has to keep playing: you surf the web while it plays, you watch other youtube videos with their audio off, you read articles and then take a break to fold some laundry, and the music is still going, it's only been ten minutes, there's three minutes left, thank god, is this what all classical music is like?
And then it's over.
I was sent this song, and clicked the link; the first impression: oh, god, it's thirteen minutes, how am I going to listen to a thirteen-minute neoclassical song, but I can't just reject this outright, and it starts playing, and it sounds repetitive; it sounds repetitive and it keeps sounding repetitive, and then it kind of tricks you into minding it carefully, and you find little patterns and subtleties and suddenly it's been five minutes and you don't really mind, and you can't stop listening, the patterns and the repeating beats are as natural as silence alone would be, you feel like you'll lose something if you turn it off, it has to keep playing: you surf the web while it plays, you watch other youtube videos with their audio off, you read articles and then take a break to fold some laundry, and the music is still going, it's only been ten minutes, there's three minutes left, thank god, is this what all classical music is like?
And then it's over.
The Colors Of Adventure — World's End Girlfriend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUir4UwyVHc
This is... endless music, calibrated and tuned and inspected with a fine-toothed-comb, with its timbre set just so to create a larger room than it was recorded in — or was it recorded? It may have arisen naturally, the flutes or pianos or synths, what are they? echoing back and forth forever, and a microphone was merely lowered down into the cavern where this natural phenomenon was taking place. It's classical music, with a focus on progression, but it's soundtrack music, avoiding your gaze, but it's string pop, with an image to think about, but it's electronica, entirely produced on computers by people wearing clothing will all the labels carefully sliced off. So I don't know what it is, and I don't have context, and it emerges through YouTube with this image — is it the artist? The album art? Does someone think it fits? It's free of association, and it's let to stand on its own.
This is... endless music, calibrated and tuned and inspected with a fine-toothed-comb, with its timbre set just so to create a larger room than it was recorded in — or was it recorded? It may have arisen naturally, the flutes or pianos or synths, what are they? echoing back and forth forever, and a microphone was merely lowered down into the cavern where this natural phenomenon was taking place. It's classical music, with a focus on progression, but it's soundtrack music, avoiding your gaze, but it's string pop, with an image to think about, but it's electronica, entirely produced on computers by people wearing clothing will all the labels carefully sliced off. So I don't know what it is, and I don't have context, and it emerges through YouTube with this image — is it the artist? The album art? Does someone think it fits? It's free of association, and it's let to stand on its own.
Savage Night at the Opera — Destroyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfuDbWD_PIk
I used to play a game in the library, taking out CDs and ripping them to my laptop in middle school. I had gaps in my musical knowledge: I hadn't heard of most or any of the bands. So I'd take random CDs off the shelf and look at their album art, the band name, the name of the song, and I'd guess: folk or metal? Destroyer is a good example of the bands that would trip me up: they're called Destroyer, one point for metal. The album cover for Kaputt is minimalist, black and white, featuring a landscape, two points for folk. The songs on Kaputt are titled accordingly: Chinatown... maybe a movie reference? Gangsters and violence, possibly a point for metal? Blue Eyes, a point for folk. Savage Night at the Opera... savage is metal, but opera is folk. Nobody gets a point. Suicide Demo... two points for metal. Poor In Love, two points for folk. Kaputt, Downtown, Song for America, too close to call. Bay of Pigs... metal, probably. Impossible to call. Turns out to be neither.
I played this game with Thrice (I was sure it'd be metal, it's really alt-rock); I played it with Lightning Bolt — Hypermagic Mountain (I was sure it'd be folk, it's really noise-rock); I played it with My Morning Jacket (I was sure it'd be metal; it's really indie rock).
The lesson here is that thirteen-year-old James sucked at guessing genres.
I used to play a game in the library, taking out CDs and ripping them to my laptop in middle school. I had gaps in my musical knowledge: I hadn't heard of most or any of the bands. So I'd take random CDs off the shelf and look at their album art, the band name, the name of the song, and I'd guess: folk or metal? Destroyer is a good example of the bands that would trip me up: they're called Destroyer, one point for metal. The album cover for Kaputt is minimalist, black and white, featuring a landscape, two points for folk. The songs on Kaputt are titled accordingly: Chinatown... maybe a movie reference? Gangsters and violence, possibly a point for metal? Blue Eyes, a point for folk. Savage Night at the Opera... savage is metal, but opera is folk. Nobody gets a point. Suicide Demo... two points for metal. Poor In Love, two points for folk. Kaputt, Downtown, Song for America, too close to call. Bay of Pigs... metal, probably. Impossible to call. Turns out to be neither.
I played this game with Thrice (I was sure it'd be metal, it's really alt-rock); I played it with Lightning Bolt — Hypermagic Mountain (I was sure it'd be folk, it's really noise-rock); I played it with My Morning Jacket (I was sure it'd be metal; it's really indie rock).
The lesson here is that thirteen-year-old James sucked at guessing genres.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
All Nite Diner — Modest Mouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVKiiU50Ag
Modest Mouse was before I knew the subtle, brutish charm of the Midwest; they're from Issaquah, Washington (as is Nate Query of The Decemberists!), but no matter how Pacific-Northwestern they identify as, I'll always relate them to the delightfully un-picturesque ideas of the great American prairies I kept in my head during high school. Something about their sound — the lo-fi, the chants and whispers and talking in the background; the bumping, repetitive basslines; the dynamics and the arrangement, and, most of all, the lyrics about driving and medication and gas stations and leaving and going to and from different small towns. The lyrics mention Triple X and 8-ball and how to avoid premature ejaculation and snaggleteeth, but it's not comedic or dramatic. It's matter-of-fact, like this just how things are and sound and continue to be in small towns in America. The backwards guitar riffs are functional and interesting, not show-offy. As with so much of small-town America, the devil is in the details.
Modest Mouse was before I knew the subtle, brutish charm of the Midwest; they're from Issaquah, Washington (as is Nate Query of The Decemberists!), but no matter how Pacific-Northwestern they identify as, I'll always relate them to the delightfully un-picturesque ideas of the great American prairies I kept in my head during high school. Something about their sound — the lo-fi, the chants and whispers and talking in the background; the bumping, repetitive basslines; the dynamics and the arrangement, and, most of all, the lyrics about driving and medication and gas stations and leaving and going to and from different small towns. The lyrics mention Triple X and 8-ball and how to avoid premature ejaculation and snaggleteeth, but it's not comedic or dramatic. It's matter-of-fact, like this just how things are and sound and continue to be in small towns in America. The backwards guitar riffs are functional and interesting, not show-offy. As with so much of small-town America, the devil is in the details.
Ecstasy of Gold (DJ Erb) — Ennio Morricone FT. Nas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB8xxh7H_hw
A wonderful mashup of Nas' One Mic with Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold, from the soundtrack for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, mixed by DJ Erb. It gives One Mic a proper sense of grandeur it so desperately needs (sorry, whoever thought it would be a good idea to sample Phil Collins), and it gives Ecstasy of Gold a fresh look: a movie I recognize as important but still have never seen, from a genre only now making a second (or is it third?) wave, by a composer whose decades of fame have passed. The idea to create this, let alone the skill involved in actually doing so, is staggering.
A wonderful mashup of Nas' One Mic with Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold, from the soundtrack for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, mixed by DJ Erb. It gives One Mic a proper sense of grandeur it so desperately needs (sorry, whoever thought it would be a good idea to sample Phil Collins), and it gives Ecstasy of Gold a fresh look: a movie I recognize as important but still have never seen, from a genre only now making a second (or is it third?) wave, by a composer whose decades of fame have passed. The idea to create this, let alone the skill involved in actually doing so, is staggering.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Lamp Is Low — Morris Nanton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFfl_PVXD30
Jazz is an echo chamber. Come here and be alone with your thoughts; get them moving, get them changing, pick up another idea or two. Settle in and listen and ponder; get up and dance; change and change and change.
The Lamp Is Low is from the 1930s; apparently there are lyrics? It came to me ass-backwards; through Nujabes's sample of the Laurindo Almeida rendition, but the above 1967 rendition is the one that tickles me the best. Explore on WhoSampled; do research; trace your own path backwards in time through the history of this Jazz standard. Listen for it in old movies; let it pop into your head during tests; lose yourself in its tone and rhythm. This is what music is for.
Jazz is an echo chamber. Come here and be alone with your thoughts; get them moving, get them changing, pick up another idea or two. Settle in and listen and ponder; get up and dance; change and change and change.
The Lamp Is Low is from the 1930s; apparently there are lyrics? It came to me ass-backwards; through Nujabes's sample of the Laurindo Almeida rendition, but the above 1967 rendition is the one that tickles me the best. Explore on WhoSampled; do research; trace your own path backwards in time through the history of this Jazz standard. Listen for it in old movies; let it pop into your head during tests; lose yourself in its tone and rhythm. This is what music is for.
Surrounded — The Mountain Goats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIvrrh48pC8
Something about the mood and setting of this album, Moon Colony Bloodbath always hits me like a movie. There's the weird harmonica and bells and the quiet strings, but moreover there's the sense of a real story behind it. This song is about an astronaut (maybe?) living in Colorado; he lives alone with a television and speakers and computers and technology (maybe?); a storm cuts him off from the rest of the world (maybe?) and he's thrilled and delighted (maybe?). As ever, lyrical interpretations only go so far. The rest of the album suffers (and benefits from) the same wonderful vagueness that is so rich and rewarding to listen to. The arrangements of the music only make it the richer.
To quote John Darnielle:
And it's so wonderful.
Something about the mood and setting of this album, Moon Colony Bloodbath always hits me like a movie. There's the weird harmonica and bells and the quiet strings, but moreover there's the sense of a real story behind it. This song is about an astronaut (maybe?) living in Colorado; he lives alone with a television and speakers and computers and technology (maybe?); a storm cuts him off from the rest of the world (maybe?) and he's thrilled and delighted (maybe?). As ever, lyrical interpretations only go so far. The rest of the album suffers (and benefits from) the same wonderful vagueness that is so rich and rewarding to listen to. The arrangements of the music only make it the richer.
To quote John Darnielle:
"Some of the songs have something to do with a loose rock opera/'concept album' idea about organ harvesting colonies on the moon and the employees thereof, who spent their off months living in secluded opulence in remote American locations. Concepts like this are actually more fun when you abandon them but leave their traces kicking around, so that's what we did."
And it's so wonderful.
Replicate — Fanfarlo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZT2M3YM3PA
This music is candy. This is music designed to be new, with new sounds and unusual instruments: the lyrics aren't dated or even specific, the repetition leads you deeper into the song until it builds and breaks into two dueling string parts; the song is built on dynamics, the addition of unusual instruments; it swells and sweeps and carries you along with it. It's pivotal. In that sense, it's very traditional pop music: music that defines itself as new and different and consuming is pop. Replicate wants to be your anthem, but won't outright tell you what to do. It shirks and shrinks and shambles around being decisive or strong. It's orchestral and indecisive: perfect for thinking, but not as good for doing.
This music is candy. This is music designed to be new, with new sounds and unusual instruments: the lyrics aren't dated or even specific, the repetition leads you deeper into the song until it builds and breaks into two dueling string parts; the song is built on dynamics, the addition of unusual instruments; it swells and sweeps and carries you along with it. It's pivotal. In that sense, it's very traditional pop music: music that defines itself as new and different and consuming is pop. Replicate wants to be your anthem, but won't outright tell you what to do. It shirks and shrinks and shambles around being decisive or strong. It's orchestral and indecisive: perfect for thinking, but not as good for doing.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Magic Power — Triumph
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwvikYBN28E
I heard this on the radio, in the shower, at 5am. As such, it's stuck in that mindset: before the day's begun, and you're looking around for a reason to get out of bed and continue with your day. And this 80s hair band that sounds like Boston or Journey is singing about relying on music, how music will never let you down, inspirational rock and roll lyrics. It's silly and the video is dated and cute and totally awesome. This music is medicine, it wants to help you get on your feet. Hell, it's about that. More Than A Feeling and Don't Stop Believing are the same. If they were movies, they'd be Die Hard. If they were books, they'd be some old ridiculous adventure novel, like Tarzan.
In that link to a live performance of Don't Stop Believing, Steve Perry shouts: "Here's some new escape music for ya!"
I heard this on the radio, in the shower, at 5am. As such, it's stuck in that mindset: before the day's begun, and you're looking around for a reason to get out of bed and continue with your day. And this 80s hair band that sounds like Boston or Journey is singing about relying on music, how music will never let you down, inspirational rock and roll lyrics. It's silly and the video is dated and cute and totally awesome. This music is medicine, it wants to help you get on your feet. Hell, it's about that. More Than A Feeling and Don't Stop Believing are the same. If they were movies, they'd be Die Hard. If they were books, they'd be some old ridiculous adventure novel, like Tarzan.
In that link to a live performance of Don't Stop Believing, Steve Perry shouts: "Here's some new escape music for ya!"
Sleep — Slowdive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ey4yAgLZlw
There is no greater sorrow than shoegaze. This is a refined product, shaped and manipulated into the perfect tonal expression of being a shy british teenager, unlucky in love, living in a quiet suburb, possibly seaside; the industry of the 1980s is gone, things are pastel, but peeling. The music scene is where the pent-up — it's not frustration, no, and not apathy either — desolation of teen angst is funneled. These aren't kids without prospects, but they're twenty- and thirty-somethings, moving to London not to entertain, but to express.
And Sleep is unintelligible. Only snatches of words prove it to be about loss, death, memory, moving on.
There is no greater sorrow than shoegaze. This is a refined product, shaped and manipulated into the perfect tonal expression of being a shy british teenager, unlucky in love, living in a quiet suburb, possibly seaside; the industry of the 1980s is gone, things are pastel, but peeling. The music scene is where the pent-up — it's not frustration, no, and not apathy either — desolation of teen angst is funneled. These aren't kids without prospects, but they're twenty- and thirty-somethings, moving to London not to entertain, but to express.
And Sleep is unintelligible. Only snatches of words prove it to be about loss, death, memory, moving on.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
All Bad Ends All — The Books
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw7pR_MFk5M
The Books are the closest thing to a true audio collage I've ever heard. This music would be art house music; it would be indulgent and masturbatory, if it weren't for the fact that it's good. It's listenable and enjoyable and creates patterns and riffs from the chaotic sampling of a trillion obscure cassette tapes, accompanied by acoustic guitar. It breaks in and out of genres, cuts out partway, but it is not produced. Afuken is produced samples, but The Books sound organic. This is computer-made music, and it reflects the advent of technology in music — but it does not demand attention to the production. It stands alone, the way a novel should, be it written on typewriter or Microsoft Word. I think that is a virtue.
The Books are the closest thing to a true audio collage I've ever heard. This music would be art house music; it would be indulgent and masturbatory, if it weren't for the fact that it's good. It's listenable and enjoyable and creates patterns and riffs from the chaotic sampling of a trillion obscure cassette tapes, accompanied by acoustic guitar. It breaks in and out of genres, cuts out partway, but it is not produced. Afuken is produced samples, but The Books sound organic. This is computer-made music, and it reflects the advent of technology in music — but it does not demand attention to the production. It stands alone, the way a novel should, be it written on typewriter or Microsoft Word. I think that is a virtue.
Poor In Love — Destroyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r2VXDLMHzE
I had a fleeting impression today, between trading albums. It was a tactile response to digital file handling; being able to feel by thickness how long an album was; being able to hand albums to someone, and by how gingerly or carelessly you tossed them there would be implications for how much you respected them, and how well you wanted them to care for the albums. And the albums would be tactile; you would put the ones you loved on your wall — a physical, tangible wall of a room, full of album covers — to show your changing tastes; you could literally rummage through the backs of shelves to find albums you'd forgotten. And they could be sorted and lost and traded, and you could get a sense of finished production: you'd have to put in effort to put on an album, and you'd sit down to listen to it. No more would music be background noise. It would be a form of entertainment. Listening would be enough: you could sit down and listen and maybe eat or drink something, but it would consume your attention.
I don't think CDs or records or cassette tapes were like this. I'm not looking to the past. But I'm not happy with the way I think about and treat the music in my life, and writing about it begins to help.
In a very, very tangential way, that's what this song is about.
I had a fleeting impression today, between trading albums. It was a tactile response to digital file handling; being able to feel by thickness how long an album was; being able to hand albums to someone, and by how gingerly or carelessly you tossed them there would be implications for how much you respected them, and how well you wanted them to care for the albums. And the albums would be tactile; you would put the ones you loved on your wall — a physical, tangible wall of a room, full of album covers — to show your changing tastes; you could literally rummage through the backs of shelves to find albums you'd forgotten. And they could be sorted and lost and traded, and you could get a sense of finished production: you'd have to put in effort to put on an album, and you'd sit down to listen to it. No more would music be background noise. It would be a form of entertainment. Listening would be enough: you could sit down and listen and maybe eat or drink something, but it would consume your attention.
I don't think CDs or records or cassette tapes were like this. I'm not looking to the past. But I'm not happy with the way I think about and treat the music in my life, and writing about it begins to help.
In a very, very tangential way, that's what this song is about.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
In A Little While — U2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOyM7l4NJso
Reportedly, Ramones frontman Joey Ramone chose to listen to this song on his deathbed.
When I was young, I used to listen to the radio with my parents. They would play standards and motown and golden oldies, 50s and 60s and 70s, and all the songs were love songs. All of them. Every Beatles song from A Hard Day's Night, and Help!, and Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with, like maybe seven exceptions are about girls, love, heartbreak, romance, longing. All of them. Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, all of them. I understood perfectly at the time.
I think the two might be connected: why, out of all the great swathes of music, a dying musician would choose to listen to a pop song about love, and why the radio plays love songs. It made sense when I was ten.
Reportedly, Ramones frontman Joey Ramone chose to listen to this song on his deathbed.
When I was young, I used to listen to the radio with my parents. They would play standards and motown and golden oldies, 50s and 60s and 70s, and all the songs were love songs. All of them. Every Beatles song from A Hard Day's Night, and Help!, and Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with, like maybe seven exceptions are about girls, love, heartbreak, romance, longing. All of them. Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, all of them. I understood perfectly at the time.
I think the two might be connected: why, out of all the great swathes of music, a dying musician would choose to listen to a pop song about love, and why the radio plays love songs. It made sense when I was ten.
Orgullecida — Buena Vista Social Club
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKyp4yh7o1A
I was pleasantly surprised to find the name of a band reflecting precisely the nature of the band: this is a group of musicians who once performed at a famous social club in Havana, who recorded an album of standards together. The music is at once heavily dated and timeless: it felt as natural to sit and listen to it in the park at 72nd St. and B'Way as it would have in Cuba; it defies my American genres. It is Son Cubano and bolero and Guajira and Salsa. It is predictable and charming, yet captivating. It is easy listening, and there is meaning beneath the surface. It is, in short, perfectly crafted for what it is.
If this is music which existed before the group, before the record, it is unblemished. It existed to be performed, not to be recorded: it is music that exists in the present tense, and it is music that is designed to leave an impression, rather than a memory. I couldn't repeat the riffs of the song I just listened to, much less the lyrics, but it is of a mood: in this sense, it is an utter triumph.
I was pleasantly surprised to find the name of a band reflecting precisely the nature of the band: this is a group of musicians who once performed at a famous social club in Havana, who recorded an album of standards together. The music is at once heavily dated and timeless: it felt as natural to sit and listen to it in the park at 72nd St. and B'Way as it would have in Cuba; it defies my American genres. It is Son Cubano and bolero and Guajira and Salsa. It is predictable and charming, yet captivating. It is easy listening, and there is meaning beneath the surface. It is, in short, perfectly crafted for what it is.
If this is music which existed before the group, before the record, it is unblemished. It existed to be performed, not to be recorded: it is music that exists in the present tense, and it is music that is designed to leave an impression, rather than a memory. I couldn't repeat the riffs of the song I just listened to, much less the lyrics, but it is of a mood: in this sense, it is an utter triumph.
Friday, March 22, 2013
No One's Gonna Love You — Cee-Lo Green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzAof7HjaxU
Band of Horses remains mostly unknown to me. This happens, more than I'd like — I'll tangentially know about a band, but there won't be that little kick of incentive for me to research them; and, with no reason, it'll sit in my blind spot for months, years. I heard Is There A Ghost in Fringe a few months back, and (oh god, the spoilers) it fit perfectly: so perfectly that I went and found that I even had some Band of Horses in my library, and it still wasn't enough to get into them properly.
So there's the original No One's Gonna Love You by Band of Horses, and then there's the cover. And he brings out a strange, dramatic, vindictive twist in the song which — well, listen to it for yourself.
But it also loses some subtlety. But Cee-Lo can't help it. If whiny emotional folk is the undercurrent of Band of Horses, then outright glee and cruelty are the undercurrents of this cover. It takes a note from Fuck You. It'd be hard not to, with context. Still, the song was about being complacent and resigned in a relationship; it becomes something much more intentioned. I like it, but it's very different.
Band of Horses remains mostly unknown to me. This happens, more than I'd like — I'll tangentially know about a band, but there won't be that little kick of incentive for me to research them; and, with no reason, it'll sit in my blind spot for months, years. I heard Is There A Ghost in Fringe a few months back, and (oh god, the spoilers) it fit perfectly: so perfectly that I went and found that I even had some Band of Horses in my library, and it still wasn't enough to get into them properly.
So there's the original No One's Gonna Love You by Band of Horses, and then there's the cover. And he brings out a strange, dramatic, vindictive twist in the song which — well, listen to it for yourself.
But it also loses some subtlety. But Cee-Lo can't help it. If whiny emotional folk is the undercurrent of Band of Horses, then outright glee and cruelty are the undercurrents of this cover. It takes a note from Fuck You. It'd be hard not to, with context. Still, the song was about being complacent and resigned in a relationship; it becomes something much more intentioned. I like it, but it's very different.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tessellate — Alt-J
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPH89HIBLiw
One of the great pleasures of music is finding new timbres. Unlike instruments (of which there are far too few) and scales, chords, and harmonies (which number so few that comprehensive mathematical analysis can be performed), timbre is infinite and varied; combinations of timbres create new timbres, becoming more diverse, like patterns, rather than less, like color. So we get infectious drums and organs and guitars, and a whiny operatic voice; slurred speech and a dry reverb snare drum; bells and a little echoing string section; each alone is novel, together they are incredible, like nothing I've heard.
And I pay attention — the lyrics stand out as exceptional because the voice fits in to the weird collage so well. It's something new and different and there's simply no need to analyze it, because enjoying the crunchy bit-crushed guitar is enough to validate the music.
One of the great pleasures of music is finding new timbres. Unlike instruments (of which there are far too few) and scales, chords, and harmonies (which number so few that comprehensive mathematical analysis can be performed), timbre is infinite and varied; combinations of timbres create new timbres, becoming more diverse, like patterns, rather than less, like color. So we get infectious drums and organs and guitars, and a whiny operatic voice; slurred speech and a dry reverb snare drum; bells and a little echoing string section; each alone is novel, together they are incredible, like nothing I've heard.
And I pay attention — the lyrics stand out as exceptional because the voice fits in to the weird collage so well. It's something new and different and there's simply no need to analyze it, because enjoying the crunchy bit-crushed guitar is enough to validate the music.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Deck The House — Akufen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nNF0FJ3-I
Microsampling! This crazy fucker samples millisecond bytes of the radio and chains it all together, and somehow it works, like a collage of sound. It's just long enough to make out timbres, maybe what instrument; never what song or station or voice is being sampled. It's very disconcerting at first listen — which this is. This is new music, and I'm judging on first listen.
Moreover, the effect that the samples give is — well, hard to follow. It jumps around, and once your ear gets used to the technique, it's fascinating. If you've ever (I can proudly say I have) been really tired and stared at carpet fibers for five minutes, you'll see that little everyday things have incredible detail in them, and that you can always pick one thing and keep focusing. So this music is a fractal — it rewards listening on every level of attention — at the measure level, and the structure level, and the sample level. Each tiny bit is perfect, and sometimes they overlap, or cut out, or have big gaps of silence, and it's fascinating.
Microsampling! This crazy fucker samples millisecond bytes of the radio and chains it all together, and somehow it works, like a collage of sound. It's just long enough to make out timbres, maybe what instrument; never what song or station or voice is being sampled. It's very disconcerting at first listen — which this is. This is new music, and I'm judging on first listen.
Moreover, the effect that the samples give is — well, hard to follow. It jumps around, and once your ear gets used to the technique, it's fascinating. If you've ever (I can proudly say I have) been really tired and stared at carpet fibers for five minutes, you'll see that little everyday things have incredible detail in them, and that you can always pick one thing and keep focusing. So this music is a fractal — it rewards listening on every level of attention — at the measure level, and the structure level, and the sample level. Each tiny bit is perfect, and sometimes they overlap, or cut out, or have big gaps of silence, and it's fascinating.
The Mistress Witch from McClure (Or, the Mind That Knows Itself) — Sufjan Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCb9jxqQYME
This was the song that convinced me I could live in Illinois; that, even though it was far away from home, it would be okay. Even though it was rural and cold and windy and two hours from a city and I knew like three people in a 100 mile radius and I didn't know how to use the buses and the classes were all different and I was in college! And this song, with its first line casually mentioning Illinois, made it okay.
That's really scary. It was - is - an entirely irrational argument. I was convinced by the banjo and the happy horns and the harmonies that someone had recorded seven years prior that something about my life would work itself out.
The lyrics aren't even anthemic. He isn't speaking to the listener, saying 'everything will be alright', the way some songs do. He's speaking about his childhood, transplanted onto a miserable little town in Illinois, and I got comfort from that.
Thank god for Sufjan Stevens, but, still. If that's all it takes to soothe my fears — horns and strings and bells — that's really good. Or is it really bad?
A note — on the cover of The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens (the cartoon) is wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt. So that's something.
This was the song that convinced me I could live in Illinois; that, even though it was far away from home, it would be okay. Even though it was rural and cold and windy and two hours from a city and I knew like three people in a 100 mile radius and I didn't know how to use the buses and the classes were all different and I was in college! And this song, with its first line casually mentioning Illinois, made it okay.
That's really scary. It was - is - an entirely irrational argument. I was convinced by the banjo and the happy horns and the harmonies that someone had recorded seven years prior that something about my life would work itself out.
The lyrics aren't even anthemic. He isn't speaking to the listener, saying 'everything will be alright', the way some songs do. He's speaking about his childhood, transplanted onto a miserable little town in Illinois, and I got comfort from that.
Thank god for Sufjan Stevens, but, still. If that's all it takes to soothe my fears — horns and strings and bells — that's really good. Or is it really bad?
A note — on the cover of The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens (the cartoon) is wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt. So that's something.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
La Femme D'Argent — Air
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5bL_XbO64
A confession: I don't listen to that much new music. I tend to binge, to take large amounts of music in at once and then slowly churn and process and digest and listen to it over years, slowly discovering album by album, often on shuffle. It's not healthy.
I got a new music dump today: sorted alphabetically, the first band is Air; the first album is Moon Safari; the first track is La Femme D'Argent. It is like a breath of fresh air.
This experiment has mostly been about my past with music; how I felt about it, how I think about it, the context in which I remember it. But I'm going to try to listen to more new music. This will be part of it, and I'm going to have to think about it while I listen to it. No more passivity.
A confession: I don't listen to that much new music. I tend to binge, to take large amounts of music in at once and then slowly churn and process and digest and listen to it over years, slowly discovering album by album, often on shuffle. It's not healthy.
I got a new music dump today: sorted alphabetically, the first band is Air; the first album is Moon Safari; the first track is La Femme D'Argent. It is like a breath of fresh air.
This experiment has mostly been about my past with music; how I felt about it, how I think about it, the context in which I remember it. But I'm going to try to listen to more new music. This will be part of it, and I'm going to have to think about it while I listen to it. No more passivity.
The Ballad of The RAA — The Rural Alberta Advantage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEOGFaajLtE
It's very easy (and therefore undesirable, by whatever principles of masochism and/or curiosity prompt this sort of analysis) to try and fail to think about something. It's very easy to listen to a song and go — oh, it's just this song, you know? It's very easy to ignore all the implicit properties of the song: the very concept that this is something people worked on; somebody wrote this and produced and recorded this, and they've probably performed this song hundreds of times, and the lyrics must mean something, because they sing them at every show, and the record's sold, and it speaks to people, right?
Somebody took drum lessons to learn how to hit the cymbal in that pattern. Somebody built that organ and fine-tuned it, made sure it made just the right whistling sound so that somebody else could sit down and fiddle with it, trying to find the right timbre so that the sound engineers can hear it over the drums. Somebody drew on a lifetime of experiences in small towns and with desperate relationships and had to churn out a couple of rhyming stanzas, and somebody had to sing them, belt them even, and has to do so at every show, so it damn well better mean something. And somebody found a string section, and taught them the part, and even though they're not part of the band, when somebody asks some kid in Canada what his mom does, he tells them she plays cello on records, but the most famous one only has her on it for a couple of seconds, and they sample it live, but still it sounds great on the record.
This song is about moving away from home, and swapping towns, maybe? It's about losing people and the loneliness you feel in small towns, and I wouldn't know a thing about it. But it's just this song, you know?
It's very easy (and therefore undesirable, by whatever principles of masochism and/or curiosity prompt this sort of analysis) to try and fail to think about something. It's very easy to listen to a song and go — oh, it's just this song, you know? It's very easy to ignore all the implicit properties of the song: the very concept that this is something people worked on; somebody wrote this and produced and recorded this, and they've probably performed this song hundreds of times, and the lyrics must mean something, because they sing them at every show, and the record's sold, and it speaks to people, right?
Somebody took drum lessons to learn how to hit the cymbal in that pattern. Somebody built that organ and fine-tuned it, made sure it made just the right whistling sound so that somebody else could sit down and fiddle with it, trying to find the right timbre so that the sound engineers can hear it over the drums. Somebody drew on a lifetime of experiences in small towns and with desperate relationships and had to churn out a couple of rhyming stanzas, and somebody had to sing them, belt them even, and has to do so at every show, so it damn well better mean something. And somebody found a string section, and taught them the part, and even though they're not part of the band, when somebody asks some kid in Canada what his mom does, he tells them she plays cello on records, but the most famous one only has her on it for a couple of seconds, and they sample it live, but still it sounds great on the record.
This song is about moving away from home, and swapping towns, maybe? It's about losing people and the loneliness you feel in small towns, and I wouldn't know a thing about it. But it's just this song, you know?
Monday, March 18, 2013
Hello, I'm In Delaware — City and Colour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRERWvDLHTc
This is a song about distance. It's a man singing across distances, and we imprint ourselves on it; for me, it's a man singing to his long-distance girlfriend, who lives too far away to see more than once a month or so. This is what it meant when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; this is still what it means to me. It's resignation: it's not a sad song, but it's not a happy life described.
Searching for the video on YouTube, I found that rarest gem of all: a worthwhile internet comment. And the point is raised: this isn't a fifteen-year-old singing this. It's a grown man. City and Colour, the Canadian singer Dallas Green, is a grown-ass man. He's 32 now; he was 25 when the song came out. This is whiny acoustic guitar folk, maybe, but it's not invalid or immature. This is something a grown-ass man feels and thinks about, and wrote and recorded and performed a song about.
What are most songs about? If they're stories, or anthems, or rap songs, they're fuzzy and many-splendored. But this is a focused song on a single emotion at a single time, and it hits harder because of it.
This is a song about distance. It's a man singing across distances, and we imprint ourselves on it; for me, it's a man singing to his long-distance girlfriend, who lives too far away to see more than once a month or so. This is what it meant when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; this is still what it means to me. It's resignation: it's not a sad song, but it's not a happy life described.
Searching for the video on YouTube, I found that rarest gem of all: a worthwhile internet comment. And the point is raised: this isn't a fifteen-year-old singing this. It's a grown man. City and Colour, the Canadian singer Dallas Green, is a grown-ass man. He's 32 now; he was 25 when the song came out. This is whiny acoustic guitar folk, maybe, but it's not invalid or immature. This is something a grown-ass man feels and thinks about, and wrote and recorded and performed a song about.
What are most songs about? If they're stories, or anthems, or rap songs, they're fuzzy and many-splendored. But this is a focused song on a single emotion at a single time, and it hits harder because of it.
Love Like A Sunset — Phoenix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Lh9uyx1Zw
This is a song with movements; it could have been arranged for an orchestra, but it's produced in modern-pop style, with electronics and guitars and filtered vocals. It has stylistic transition periods at 3:46, 5:20, 5:47. It grows slowly and builds to a climax, cutting out and turning in on itself, and then reversing. It has structure. This is a song that takes patience to listen to, and more patience to write and record. This from a Paris garage rock band. I don't know or want to know the context, history, intentions for this song; its lyrics are meaningless; its chord structure is perfunctory. It performs one function, and that is to build and release, and it does this very, very well.
A lot of music tries to do everything — and I promised I wouldn't compare apples and oranges — it tries to provide storytelling, inspirational lyrics, a new sound, a frontman worthy of idolatry, a dance beat; it tries to be moving and uplifting. Any big band has to meet these checkmarks; they need to inspire and refresh and be new and different and brilliant, and where they falter, they are judged. But a tiny garage rock band from Paris, France needs only to satisfy their own aesthetics, and that is where Phoenix succeeds so succinctly.
This is a song with movements; it could have been arranged for an orchestra, but it's produced in modern-pop style, with electronics and guitars and filtered vocals. It has stylistic transition periods at 3:46, 5:20, 5:47. It grows slowly and builds to a climax, cutting out and turning in on itself, and then reversing. It has structure. This is a song that takes patience to listen to, and more patience to write and record. This from a Paris garage rock band. I don't know or want to know the context, history, intentions for this song; its lyrics are meaningless; its chord structure is perfunctory. It performs one function, and that is to build and release, and it does this very, very well.
A lot of music tries to do everything — and I promised I wouldn't compare apples and oranges — it tries to provide storytelling, inspirational lyrics, a new sound, a frontman worthy of idolatry, a dance beat; it tries to be moving and uplifting. Any big band has to meet these checkmarks; they need to inspire and refresh and be new and different and brilliant, and where they falter, they are judged. But a tiny garage rock band from Paris, France needs only to satisfy their own aesthetics, and that is where Phoenix succeeds so succinctly.
Steppin Out — Joe Jackson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk70wuIYBBE
Without context, I would have guessed Joe Jackson was a member of the Jackson family, possibly an adult member of the Jackson 5 — African-American, mid-70s. With context, I discover that Joe Jackson is David Ian Jackson, born in England, currently living in Berlin; white; Steppin' Out was written in 1982, part of the New Wave movement rather than being part of the original canon of 60s pop.
Aside from context; listening to this song at 3am driving north through Eastern Central Illinois, far removed from its imagined or actual history or purpose; miles from a nightclub. Darkness in every direction, and then a bright orange floodlight, projecting through the fog for fifty feet in a cone downwards from it, filling the cab with its own light in the rhythm the floodlights pass, and suddenly the highway is disco, and context doesn't quite matter.
Without context, I would have guessed Joe Jackson was a member of the Jackson family, possibly an adult member of the Jackson 5 — African-American, mid-70s. With context, I discover that Joe Jackson is David Ian Jackson, born in England, currently living in Berlin; white; Steppin' Out was written in 1982, part of the New Wave movement rather than being part of the original canon of 60s pop.
Aside from context; listening to this song at 3am driving north through Eastern Central Illinois, far removed from its imagined or actual history or purpose; miles from a nightclub. Darkness in every direction, and then a bright orange floodlight, projecting through the fog for fifty feet in a cone downwards from it, filling the cab with its own light in the rhythm the floodlights pass, and suddenly the highway is disco, and context doesn't quite matter.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Bye Bye Bye — Plants and Animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSE6dSz3uLI
First semester, I pulled a series of late night stints in Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, staying up into the early hours to work on my ME 170 homework, a computer-aided design course which required the usage of any number of computer labs, all of which were across campus from my dorm. So I would have a big dinner, get my headphones, and go work.
It was tedious. I like the theory behind it, but in execution it was mindless, mechanical work, requiring — at most — the mental capacity required to pick up and rotate an object, or use a ruler.
So I sat in a dark, empty computer lab at 2am, doing homework, listening to a bunch of new albums. One of them was the album this song was from. Another irreversible link of music and time/place.
First semester, I pulled a series of late night stints in Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, staying up into the early hours to work on my ME 170 homework, a computer-aided design course which required the usage of any number of computer labs, all of which were across campus from my dorm. So I would have a big dinner, get my headphones, and go work.
It was tedious. I like the theory behind it, but in execution it was mindless, mechanical work, requiring — at most — the mental capacity required to pick up and rotate an object, or use a ruler.
So I sat in a dark, empty computer lab at 2am, doing homework, listening to a bunch of new albums. One of them was the album this song was from. Another irreversible link of music and time/place.
Mercy Street — Peter Gabriel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoVVxom8GpY
Watching a planetarium show today, they show a glimpse of one of the Voyager spacecraft which left the solar system armed with messages from planet earth: patterns to represent chemical, physical, and astronomical knowledge. They play a clip of a child saying "Hello from the children of planet earth."
I think the best way to communicate with aliens would be to send them music: to communicate the fine harmonies, rhythms and patterns of music would demonstrate more culture than a specific clip of language.
If Biology is specific to earth, so is language. But, as Physics and Chemistry and Astronomical knowledge are independent — worth communicating across the stars — so too is music, showing harmonic frequencies, rhythm and repetition, motifs and patterns, a form of art based on mathematics.
My vote would be for Mercy Street.
Watching a planetarium show today, they show a glimpse of one of the Voyager spacecraft which left the solar system armed with messages from planet earth: patterns to represent chemical, physical, and astronomical knowledge. They play a clip of a child saying "Hello from the children of planet earth."
I think the best way to communicate with aliens would be to send them music: to communicate the fine harmonies, rhythms and patterns of music would demonstrate more culture than a specific clip of language.
If Biology is specific to earth, so is language. But, as Physics and Chemistry and Astronomical knowledge are independent — worth communicating across the stars — so too is music, showing harmonic frequencies, rhythm and repetition, motifs and patterns, a form of art based on mathematics.
My vote would be for Mercy Street.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off — Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2oEmPP5dTM
Yesterday morning, before my Calc midterm, one of the guys who sits near me piped up: he'd been going through a breakup; he'd been studying for midterms; things were bad, and this song roused his spirits. He said: there's a part near the end (3:16) where Louis Armstrong just shouts 'tomahter' in the silliest way.
So we're in this math classroom at 9am, with my stomach churning and my head pounding and a math midterm before me: and suddenly the entire class including the teacher is doing Louis Armstrong impressions, shouting tomahter at the top of our lungs.
Yesterday morning, before my Calc midterm, one of the guys who sits near me piped up: he'd been going through a breakup; he'd been studying for midterms; things were bad, and this song roused his spirits. He said: there's a part near the end (3:16) where Louis Armstrong just shouts 'tomahter' in the silliest way.
So we're in this math classroom at 9am, with my stomach churning and my head pounding and a math midterm before me: and suddenly the entire class including the teacher is doing Louis Armstrong impressions, shouting tomahter at the top of our lungs.
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime — Beck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIVh8Mu1a4Q
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime was originally by The Korgis, but the version I'm familiar with is Beck's cover (above), featured in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For me, at least, it's inextricably tied to the movie.
It's weird to only know a song from a film, but there's no shame in that. I only know Mad World from Donnie Darko (which I haven't even seen!) I only know Where Is My Mind from Fight Club. I only know Johnny B. Goode from Back to the Future.
Worst of all (or maybe best) I first heard Hallelujah in 2001 (god damn, I was in first grade) — not the Leonard Cohen version, nor the John Cale, nor the Jeff Buckley. It was the Rufus Wainwright version that found me. It was on the soundtrack to Shrek. Even in first grade, I was ashamed that such a good song had reached me through an animated film.
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime was originally by The Korgis, but the version I'm familiar with is Beck's cover (above), featured in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For me, at least, it's inextricably tied to the movie.
It's weird to only know a song from a film, but there's no shame in that. I only know Mad World from Donnie Darko (which I haven't even seen!) I only know Where Is My Mind from Fight Club. I only know Johnny B. Goode from Back to the Future.
Worst of all (or maybe best) I first heard Hallelujah in 2001 (god damn, I was in first grade) — not the Leonard Cohen version, nor the John Cale, nor the Jeff Buckley. It was the Rufus Wainwright version that found me. It was on the soundtrack to Shrek. Even in first grade, I was ashamed that such a good song had reached me through an animated film.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Gimme Shelter — The Rolling Stones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rnxQBizoU
As ever with a famous band like The Rolling Stones, context — nearly 45 years later — is next to impossible. I understand the Vietnam War-era sentiments; I understand the constant use in Martin Scorsese films; I understand the international U.S./U.K. politics (or, rather, understand that I totally don't). These are not what I want to focus on.
Two things of note about this song: One, it is forever tied to a night last June when I drove back from High School graduation through TriBeCa as the sun set, furious at high school for being done when I wasn't done with it yet, and, Two, that the female vocalist, Merry Clayton, suffered a miscarriage from hitting the high note at 3:01 in the above video.
The Rolling Stones are before my time; they reflect a rebellious proto-punk spirit which I do not embody. They are foreign, literally and metaphorically. But I am an eighteen-year-old, and The Stones have become more-or-less a rite of passage for post-puberty and young adulthood. They are angry and horny and disillusioned; they are sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and best of all, they are free of context.
As ever with a famous band like The Rolling Stones, context — nearly 45 years later — is next to impossible. I understand the Vietnam War-era sentiments; I understand the constant use in Martin Scorsese films; I understand the international U.S./U.K. politics (or, rather, understand that I totally don't). These are not what I want to focus on.
Two things of note about this song: One, it is forever tied to a night last June when I drove back from High School graduation through TriBeCa as the sun set, furious at high school for being done when I wasn't done with it yet, and, Two, that the female vocalist, Merry Clayton, suffered a miscarriage from hitting the high note at 3:01 in the above video.
The Rolling Stones are before my time; they reflect a rebellious proto-punk spirit which I do not embody. They are foreign, literally and metaphorically. But I am an eighteen-year-old, and The Stones have become more-or-less a rite of passage for post-puberty and young adulthood. They are angry and horny and disillusioned; they are sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and best of all, they are free of context.
Symphony No.7; 2nd Movement — Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbNGklNz8Yk
There is an odd allure in the combination of sound and vision. Each alone can be dangerously lacking. Film, especially silent film, has the tendency to bore, even with stunning visuals. Similarly, our brains are designed to filter background noise. Music without context is forgettable.
I first heard this Beethoven as the soundtrack for a movie called The Fall. It had incredible visuals, real international cinematography of ruins and palaces and jungles. So Beethoven became inextricably tied to these Rudyard Kipling-esque escapades.
It's possible that the music alone, to the uninitiated, won't invoke the same sense of grandeur. But I hope it does.
There is an odd allure in the combination of sound and vision. Each alone can be dangerously lacking. Film, especially silent film, has the tendency to bore, even with stunning visuals. Similarly, our brains are designed to filter background noise. Music without context is forgettable.
I first heard this Beethoven as the soundtrack for a movie called The Fall. It had incredible visuals, real international cinematography of ruins and palaces and jungles. So Beethoven became inextricably tied to these Rudyard Kipling-esque escapades.
It's possible that the music alone, to the uninitiated, won't invoke the same sense of grandeur. But I hope it does.
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of — U2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSoNWE4j36U
There's something about music that gets stuck. Maybe it's a certain riff, or a melody, or just how something sounds, but I've never gotten movies or books stuck in my head the same way I've gotten music stuck. Earworms, they're called. I don't know why — but would I want to?
I was at a sleepover, many, many years ago. I must've been ten or eleven, and I hadn't been to too many sleepovers before. It was a new house and it rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn't get comfortable, and I kept using the bathroom, and I just couldn't fall asleep. And this song — Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, by U2 — which I'd just heard off a mixtape was somehow... just there, simmering, under the surface, waiting for all the other activity in my brain to stop so it could play.
And it did. For eight straight hours, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to this one song by U2 in my head on repeat. I didn't get any sleep that night.
And the song got stuck, permanently. Whenever I can't sleep, whenever I have even a half-hour's extra wakefulness, I start to get nervous: what if this is one of those nights where I just can't get to sleep? And the opening drum riff begins.
Perhaps it is a testament to U2 as a band that I can still listen to them. It is a damn good song.
There's something about music that gets stuck. Maybe it's a certain riff, or a melody, or just how something sounds, but I've never gotten movies or books stuck in my head the same way I've gotten music stuck. Earworms, they're called. I don't know why — but would I want to?
I was at a sleepover, many, many years ago. I must've been ten or eleven, and I hadn't been to too many sleepovers before. It was a new house and it rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn't get comfortable, and I kept using the bathroom, and I just couldn't fall asleep. And this song — Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, by U2 — which I'd just heard off a mixtape was somehow... just there, simmering, under the surface, waiting for all the other activity in my brain to stop so it could play.
And it did. For eight straight hours, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to this one song by U2 in my head on repeat. I didn't get any sleep that night.
And the song got stuck, permanently. Whenever I can't sleep, whenever I have even a half-hour's extra wakefulness, I start to get nervous: what if this is one of those nights where I just can't get to sleep? And the opening drum riff begins.
Perhaps it is a testament to U2 as a band that I can still listen to them. It is a damn good song.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Sexfaldur — Amiina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yrLvTh_C20
I'm not here to write about the restorative powers of music (one can only hope). As it is, I'm sick. I came down with a headache, fever, some tummy stuff, the whole works. Happened during class. I have a midterm tomorrow and then a redeye Saturday morning at 4am. Not too happy about it.
As it is, my nerves and nervous system are shot. So the only thing I can listen to (or do, really) is retread old music. My body rejects new music like a white blood cell; it's too unfamiliar and strange, I can't tell where it's going.
But I know Amiina, and it's the perfect bedside music. It's slow and calming, but there's stuff happening. Icelandic ambient classical with bells, whatever. The point isn't what they did, or even how they did it. This is music being used as a tool by the me, the listener, and I wonder if bands know (I imagine they'd have to) how many people they touch. This is music I've listened to at three a.m. when I couldn't sleep, or didn't want to; this is music I've listened to when I'm sick or when I'm sad, or even when I'm deliriously happy. It's soothing and encompassing, and maybe there's a specific thing about it — the tempo, or the timbre, or the chord progressions. But it works wonders.
I'm not here to write about the restorative powers of music (one can only hope). As it is, I'm sick. I came down with a headache, fever, some tummy stuff, the whole works. Happened during class. I have a midterm tomorrow and then a redeye Saturday morning at 4am. Not too happy about it.
As it is, my nerves and nervous system are shot. So the only thing I can listen to (or do, really) is retread old music. My body rejects new music like a white blood cell; it's too unfamiliar and strange, I can't tell where it's going.
But I know Amiina, and it's the perfect bedside music. It's slow and calming, but there's stuff happening. Icelandic ambient classical with bells, whatever. The point isn't what they did, or even how they did it. This is music being used as a tool by the me, the listener, and I wonder if bands know (I imagine they'd have to) how many people they touch. This is music I've listened to at three a.m. when I couldn't sleep, or didn't want to; this is music I've listened to when I'm sick or when I'm sad, or even when I'm deliriously happy. It's soothing and encompassing, and maybe there's a specific thing about it — the tempo, or the timbre, or the chord progressions. But it works wonders.
They All Laughed — Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6gX7yVob6w
At the beginning of this year, my family and I drove out to Illinois from New York: a 21 hour drive split over two days. I got to soundtrack the whole thing: I made a mix CD of songs about New York (Leaving New York — R.E.M); I made a mix CD about the midwest (Bloodbuzz Ohio — The National); I burned Illinoise — Sufjan Stevens. I made a mix CD about driving (Drive My Car — The Beatles). But the fun one was a mix CD about travelling. I went through my library and found all the songs about places; songs with the names of places in their titles. I had Australia — The Shins; I had Rome — Phoenix; I had Hello, I'm in Delaware — City and Colour.
Most of my music I've gotten from other people; often mislabeled. (I'm looking at you, Teenage Wasteland — Baba O'Riley). Also on the travelling mix was August in New York — Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong, except it wasn't. It was the song They All Laughed in disguise. I listened to it a few times before I realized something was wrong.
I have so much Ella, I probably never would have found this old Gershwin song from 1937's Shall We Dance. But it quickly became one of my favorite songs from the era. Funny how these things work.
At the beginning of this year, my family and I drove out to Illinois from New York: a 21 hour drive split over two days. I got to soundtrack the whole thing: I made a mix CD of songs about New York (Leaving New York — R.E.M); I made a mix CD about the midwest (Bloodbuzz Ohio — The National); I burned Illinoise — Sufjan Stevens. I made a mix CD about driving (Drive My Car — The Beatles). But the fun one was a mix CD about travelling. I went through my library and found all the songs about places; songs with the names of places in their titles. I had Australia — The Shins; I had Rome — Phoenix; I had Hello, I'm in Delaware — City and Colour.
Most of my music I've gotten from other people; often mislabeled. (I'm looking at you, Teenage Wasteland — Baba O'Riley). Also on the travelling mix was August in New York — Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong, except it wasn't. It was the song They All Laughed in disguise. I listened to it a few times before I realized something was wrong.
I have so much Ella, I probably never would have found this old Gershwin song from 1937's Shall We Dance. But it quickly became one of my favorite songs from the era. Funny how these things work.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
A Case of You — James Blake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJDSueNSMJE
A cover by James Blake that completely transforms the original. This is the sort of song, I think, where Joni Mitchell wrote it out because it was too intimate to share any other way. There's a wonderful quotation from Voltaire — I don't much care the context — "Anything too stupid to be said is sung."
We reach the limits of language when somebody is too embarrassed to say something earnestly. It's hard to say something like "I can't do this without you." (It was hard even writing that. Go ahead and try it.) But it's easy to write it into a song and sing it, and it's even easier to give someone that song to try and say it without having to, y'know, say it.
So you get songs like Hey Julie — Fountains of Wayne. Maybe this song, too, was a man trying to express himself properly. But it rose to fame and stayed in the popular consciousness because, I think, it's useful. It's easier to rationalize difficult emotions when there are songs about them. So we trade the ability to communicate and express complex thoughts, ideas, and emotions for references — shared cultural references to media, to books, movies, and music.
Maybe James Blake wanted to say something like what's in the song. Maybe he just thought it was beautiful. But now I know about the song, and now it's useful to me.
A cover by James Blake that completely transforms the original. This is the sort of song, I think, where Joni Mitchell wrote it out because it was too intimate to share any other way. There's a wonderful quotation from Voltaire — I don't much care the context — "Anything too stupid to be said is sung."
We reach the limits of language when somebody is too embarrassed to say something earnestly. It's hard to say something like "I can't do this without you." (It was hard even writing that. Go ahead and try it.) But it's easy to write it into a song and sing it, and it's even easier to give someone that song to try and say it without having to, y'know, say it.
So you get songs like Hey Julie — Fountains of Wayne. Maybe this song, too, was a man trying to express himself properly. But it rose to fame and stayed in the popular consciousness because, I think, it's useful. It's easier to rationalize difficult emotions when there are songs about them. So we trade the ability to communicate and express complex thoughts, ideas, and emotions for references — shared cultural references to media, to books, movies, and music.
Maybe James Blake wanted to say something like what's in the song. Maybe he just thought it was beautiful. But now I know about the song, and now it's useful to me.
This Magic Moment — The Mountain Goats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtxsS_Jfww4
One of the things I like most about oldies — R+B, soul, motown hits from the 1950s and 60s — is that they're unquantifiable. It's hard to explain why they've stuck with us for so long. Songs from the 1970s are dated as 70s songs, dismissed as disco or free jazz; songs from the 1940s are dated as standards; Sinatra, pre-rock'n'roll, and the end of classic Jazz. But the oldies are still somehow relevant; they influence the timbre, tone, and content of modern music in an unusual way. Maybe it's a sliding scale, and in ten years we'll be influenced by the 1970s, but I doubt it. Something about how music was written and produced in the 1950s and 60s was special; still holds value.
This Magic Moment was originally by Ben E. King and The Drifters; most people know the song and its tune; less know the name; nobody knows who wrote it. But it's somewhere in the popular consciousness, along with A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and perhaps The Canterbury Tales: it's outlived its era and it's hard to say why.
One of the things I like most about oldies — R+B, soul, motown hits from the 1950s and 60s — is that they're unquantifiable. It's hard to explain why they've stuck with us for so long. Songs from the 1970s are dated as 70s songs, dismissed as disco or free jazz; songs from the 1940s are dated as standards; Sinatra, pre-rock'n'roll, and the end of classic Jazz. But the oldies are still somehow relevant; they influence the timbre, tone, and content of modern music in an unusual way. Maybe it's a sliding scale, and in ten years we'll be influenced by the 1970s, but I doubt it. Something about how music was written and produced in the 1950s and 60s was special; still holds value.
This Magic Moment was originally by Ben E. King and The Drifters; most people know the song and its tune; less know the name; nobody knows who wrote it. But it's somewhere in the popular consciousness, along with A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and perhaps The Canterbury Tales: it's outlived its era and it's hard to say why.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Day is Done — Nick Drake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2jxjv0HkwM
Once, on the subway, I read sonnets over the shoulder of (presumably) a Columbia student. She was reading not from a book but off sheets of paper, and her hand was blocking the header, so I didn't know who had written it or what it was titled. Reading it, the sonnet was awful. It was bland and flowery, it meant nothing, it didn't evoke. And, reading it, I thought: why aren't sonnets as good as they once were?
Then she moved her hand, and uncovered the title: it was a sonnet by Shakespeare.
So I read it again. And on second reading, it was excellent. It had subtleties I'd missed, it had rhyme schemes that made sense given their age, it was brilliant. How could I have been so foolish the first time through?
So poetry is dated. Things are dated. I think that's what Day is Done is about. It's poetry, arranged and produced and recorded 44 years ago, and it still stands. I think that's the difference between pop and folk: pop is music in the present tense, but folk addresses human themes. Mortality was relevant in 1969, it's relevant in 2013, it'll be relevant in 2057. Pop rarely has that shelf life.
I discovered Nick Drake two summers ago, on a college campus, and the pastoral themes matched the new environment. I was reading pastoral horror literature and listening to pastoral music. The landscape up in Ithaca was pastoral, and it set this very clear two-month period, and Nick Drake is tied to that.
Once, on the subway, I read sonnets over the shoulder of (presumably) a Columbia student. She was reading not from a book but off sheets of paper, and her hand was blocking the header, so I didn't know who had written it or what it was titled. Reading it, the sonnet was awful. It was bland and flowery, it meant nothing, it didn't evoke. And, reading it, I thought: why aren't sonnets as good as they once were?
Then she moved her hand, and uncovered the title: it was a sonnet by Shakespeare.
So I read it again. And on second reading, it was excellent. It had subtleties I'd missed, it had rhyme schemes that made sense given their age, it was brilliant. How could I have been so foolish the first time through?
So poetry is dated. Things are dated. I think that's what Day is Done is about. It's poetry, arranged and produced and recorded 44 years ago, and it still stands. I think that's the difference between pop and folk: pop is music in the present tense, but folk addresses human themes. Mortality was relevant in 1969, it's relevant in 2013, it'll be relevant in 2057. Pop rarely has that shelf life.
I discovered Nick Drake two summers ago, on a college campus, and the pastoral themes matched the new environment. I was reading pastoral horror literature and listening to pastoral music. The landscape up in Ithaca was pastoral, and it set this very clear two-month period, and Nick Drake is tied to that.
Walkaways — Counting Crows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDd9YVpkgO8
This is one of those songs that ended up bound to a certain time in my life — in this case, a weekend in 2008 or 09 when I went down to Philadelphia to visit my cousin in Wharton. We stayed in his unfurnished apartment and slept on air mattresses, and during the day went out and toured the city itself. It was a new city, and I was old enough to walk around by myself. It was raining up the promenade to the Philadelphia Art Museum, and suddenly I had this glimpse of what life would be like in the future — going to college and living somewhere different, living by myself or with new people. And I was young, and I had this album on my iPod, and somehow the two got linked. The song was about separation and a new city and so was that weekend — although, that weekend cast a tone on the weekends I would spend up in Boston, or at a friend's house in CT, or even whole summers in PA. It was different and foreign and there was a strange joy in that, but also a sadness, like knowing that this would soon stop being an excursion from real life and start being it.
This is one of those songs that ended up bound to a certain time in my life — in this case, a weekend in 2008 or 09 when I went down to Philadelphia to visit my cousin in Wharton. We stayed in his unfurnished apartment and slept on air mattresses, and during the day went out and toured the city itself. It was a new city, and I was old enough to walk around by myself. It was raining up the promenade to the Philadelphia Art Museum, and suddenly I had this glimpse of what life would be like in the future — going to college and living somewhere different, living by myself or with new people. And I was young, and I had this album on my iPod, and somehow the two got linked. The song was about separation and a new city and so was that weekend — although, that weekend cast a tone on the weekends I would spend up in Boston, or at a friend's house in CT, or even whole summers in PA. It was different and foreign and there was a strange joy in that, but also a sadness, like knowing that this would soon stop being an excursion from real life and start being it.
Titanic Vandalism — The Go! Team
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDMGXZL6-f8
I've written before on the idea of genre mixing — a relatively modern idea — and The Go! Team is a wonderful example of that. It's garage rock full of sampling, but there are chants, hip-hop, soundtracks, classical, guitar rock, even Bollywood. In short, every track is a high-energy theme song to some terrible 1980s action movie, and it's fun.
Moreover, the production is lo-fi — so lo-fi that it's often impossible to tell what's been performed by one of the band's three drummers and what's been sampled from an old movie. So is the timbre a nostalgic homage to the 70s, or an actual copy from it? Is sampling a form of homage? I know lots of these tracks contain samples, but at a certain point it doesn't matter, and I think The Go! Team reaches that point. Finding out now that one of the riffs was a sample wouldn't be elucidating, it would be frustrating. Even if it's sampled, it's still original.
I've written before on the idea of genre mixing — a relatively modern idea — and The Go! Team is a wonderful example of that. It's garage rock full of sampling, but there are chants, hip-hop, soundtracks, classical, guitar rock, even Bollywood. In short, every track is a high-energy theme song to some terrible 1980s action movie, and it's fun.
Moreover, the production is lo-fi — so lo-fi that it's often impossible to tell what's been performed by one of the band's three drummers and what's been sampled from an old movie. So is the timbre a nostalgic homage to the 70s, or an actual copy from it? Is sampling a form of homage? I know lots of these tracks contain samples, but at a certain point it doesn't matter, and I think The Go! Team reaches that point. Finding out now that one of the riffs was a sample wouldn't be elucidating, it would be frustrating. Even if it's sampled, it's still original.
Monday, March 11, 2013
It's A Fire — Portishead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZlEVAhhhVw
About a year ago, I made a playlist of entirely female vocalists. Somehow, I don't have a lot of music with women on vocals. Something about the timbre, or inherent patriarchal bias, whatever. I actually struggled to find fourteen songs with female vocalists, and by the end, they were almost entirely trip-hop.
Trip-hop is a genre of electronica, based on trip (dub, reggae, techno) and hip-hop, often with rap, sampling, guest stars, and other features of hip-hop. It came out of Britain in the 90s and 00s, mostly through bands like Portishead (above) and Massive Attack.
Portishead and especially Massive Attack fall into that genre of music I so revere, the sort which defies description. To call it ambient, drum-based, processed, dark would be a start, but it's more... immersive. It paints the whole world in shadow for the duration of the song. Very wonderful stuff.
About a year ago, I made a playlist of entirely female vocalists. Somehow, I don't have a lot of music with women on vocals. Something about the timbre, or inherent patriarchal bias, whatever. I actually struggled to find fourteen songs with female vocalists, and by the end, they were almost entirely trip-hop.
Trip-hop is a genre of electronica, based on trip (dub, reggae, techno) and hip-hop, often with rap, sampling, guest stars, and other features of hip-hop. It came out of Britain in the 90s and 00s, mostly through bands like Portishead (above) and Massive Attack.
Portishead and especially Massive Attack fall into that genre of music I so revere, the sort which defies description. To call it ambient, drum-based, processed, dark would be a start, but it's more... immersive. It paints the whole world in shadow for the duration of the song. Very wonderful stuff.
Suit & Tie — Justin Timberlake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsUsVbTj2AY
When you have a hammer...
This music is candy. So I was thrilled and disjointed at the 2:32 mark on his SNL performance, when the song breaks momentarily into... another song. The horn riff is only four notes long, and somehow it implied a whole other song. I think it's a 1970s funk song, but I checked all the ones I'm super familiar with. I checked the funk compilations I have, I checked with other people with musical memories, I checked everywhere. It sounds like the start to the platonic ideal of a 1970s song, but I don't know if it really exists...
And the song rushes on. Later, listening to the real version, not the SNL version, I recognize the riff as something only his voice does; that's where I was recognizing the horn riff from. The song was copying itself, and my ear heard it as copying something more original. I was totally wrong — it was JT the whole time.
I think that's a high form of compliment.
When you have a hammer...
This music is candy. So I was thrilled and disjointed at the 2:32 mark on his SNL performance, when the song breaks momentarily into... another song. The horn riff is only four notes long, and somehow it implied a whole other song. I think it's a 1970s funk song, but I checked all the ones I'm super familiar with. I checked the funk compilations I have, I checked with other people with musical memories, I checked everywhere. It sounds like the start to the platonic ideal of a 1970s song, but I don't know if it really exists...
And the song rushes on. Later, listening to the real version, not the SNL version, I recognize the riff as something only his voice does; that's where I was recognizing the horn riff from. The song was copying itself, and my ear heard it as copying something more original. I was totally wrong — it was JT the whole time.
I think that's a high form of compliment.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXBp9xlIos
The BQE is a modern classical album about an expressway in New York City, and that's ridiculous, except that it's also very, very good. The Brooklyn-Queens expressway itself is a gorgeous, surreal vista with views from the air of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Oddly enough, this isn't the first romanticization of civil engineering/architecture. Public works often capture the public imagination (think Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc). An expressway is an unconventional one, but... well, it just works.
It's not Sufjan Stevens' usual fare whatsoever. He is a pop musician who dabbles in classical, electronic, folk. This is a full classical album (with accompanying visuals): entirely instrumental.
My strongest memory of The BQE is driving along it at 3 AM, I think — to get back to Illinois after winter break, I had a 4 AM flight out of JFK, and we drove. It was the middle of the night, and foggy, so only the lights of the city were visible, not the content itself. I had burned this album to CD, and we were listening to it, and it just... it sort of matched up. It matched up perfectly. The beginning matched up with East Harlem, and then the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge over Randalls Island, and so forth until Jamaica Bay. And the music swelled and faltered as the road did, breaking into electronics as we went under another, taller expressway; swelling as the AirTrain joined us from the left, and building to a—
And then a postlude. The plane taxied and burst into the sky, through the thick cloud and rain, and the night turned to day — the sun was already up, above the fog cover.
The BQE is a modern classical album about an expressway in New York City, and that's ridiculous, except that it's also very, very good. The Brooklyn-Queens expressway itself is a gorgeous, surreal vista with views from the air of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Oddly enough, this isn't the first romanticization of civil engineering/architecture. Public works often capture the public imagination (think Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc). An expressway is an unconventional one, but... well, it just works.
It's not Sufjan Stevens' usual fare whatsoever. He is a pop musician who dabbles in classical, electronic, folk. This is a full classical album (with accompanying visuals): entirely instrumental.
My strongest memory of The BQE is driving along it at 3 AM, I think — to get back to Illinois after winter break, I had a 4 AM flight out of JFK, and we drove. It was the middle of the night, and foggy, so only the lights of the city were visible, not the content itself. I had burned this album to CD, and we were listening to it, and it just... it sort of matched up. It matched up perfectly. The beginning matched up with East Harlem, and then the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge over Randalls Island, and so forth until Jamaica Bay. And the music swelled and faltered as the road did, breaking into electronics as we went under another, taller expressway; swelling as the AirTrain joined us from the left, and building to a—
And then a postlude. The plane taxied and burst into the sky, through the thick cloud and rain, and the night turned to day — the sun was already up, above the fog cover.
Alright — John Legend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilw2ggzQLR0
One of the terrible things about being in a cappella is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Luckily, one of the great things about being in a cappella is that when you have a hammer, everything is a nail.
Alright is a modern R+B song by John Legend, off an album (Get Lifted) where — and I shit you not — basically every single song is about cheating in one way or another. Alright is about tempting other girls to cheat on their boyfriends with him. She Don't Have To Know is John Legend singing about cheating on his girlfriend. So is Used To Love U. Number One, Ordinary People, and Stay With You are all, promising not to cheat on his girlfriend any more. In I Can Change, it takes Snoop Dogg to convince John Legend not to cheat on his girlfriend.
Phenomenally, Number One guest stars Kanye West, who has perhaps my favorite verse of all time: a short interlude in which he talks to his penis and discovers it has a mind of its own and that it, not he, is responsible for cheating.
Oh. My. God.
One of the terrible things about being in a cappella is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Luckily, one of the great things about being in a cappella is that when you have a hammer, everything is a nail.
Alright is a modern R+B song by John Legend, off an album (Get Lifted) where — and I shit you not — basically every single song is about cheating in one way or another. Alright is about tempting other girls to cheat on their boyfriends with him. She Don't Have To Know is John Legend singing about cheating on his girlfriend. So is Used To Love U. Number One, Ordinary People, and Stay With You are all, promising not to cheat on his girlfriend any more. In I Can Change, it takes Snoop Dogg to convince John Legend not to cheat on his girlfriend.
Phenomenally, Number One guest stars Kanye West, who has perhaps my favorite verse of all time: a short interlude in which he talks to his penis and discovers it has a mind of its own and that it, not he, is responsible for cheating.
I suppose you was told by them hoes I was cheatin'
Thinkin' my heart don't got nothing to do with my penis
He got a mind of his own and he just be seeing shit
And I don't wanna cheat but I don't be saying shit
I try to jack off he ask me who is you playin' wit?
But I know he love you he told me you was his favorite
Oh. My. God.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Moondance — Van Morrison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rovxbHeGNVo
I remember dancing to this song at pre-primary school graduation. A decade and a half later, I can still remember my kindergarten teacher telling us to draw the first letter our names with our feet if we got panicked and forgot the moves.
I don't know much about Van Morrison (other than the requisite Brown Eyed Girl), but I know jazz-folk when I hear it, and Van Morrison's Irish accent is unmistakable. Somehow the song stuck with me throughout a decade and a half.
This winter, at a Christmas party, I was playing ambiance for the room; as much gentle jazz piano as I could. Eventually, I began to run out of songs I knew, and somehow the Brubeck I was butchering became Moondance, and only afterwards did I realize what I'd been playing.
I remember dancing to this song at pre-primary school graduation. A decade and a half later, I can still remember my kindergarten teacher telling us to draw the first letter our names with our feet if we got panicked and forgot the moves.
I don't know much about Van Morrison (other than the requisite Brown Eyed Girl), but I know jazz-folk when I hear it, and Van Morrison's Irish accent is unmistakable. Somehow the song stuck with me throughout a decade and a half.
This winter, at a Christmas party, I was playing ambiance for the room; as much gentle jazz piano as I could. Eventually, I began to run out of songs I knew, and somehow the Brubeck I was butchering became Moondance, and only afterwards did I realize what I'd been playing.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Sunrise — Shingo Suzuki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TZy0rBSscA
Perspective — and I write this actively procrastinating a tricky CS125 assignment — is essential. This is why we celebrate, why we talk about our lives to other people, why we escape into fiction.
All music is an international community, whether or not any particular genre likes to admit it. Hip-hop and rap are based especially upon braggadocio, which is unstable in a large perspective. Thus, world music is a distinct genre; international jazz and classical and even rock and pop are normal. But international hip-hop — hip-hop that admits there is a world outside the neighborhood in which it is made — is rare and often phenomenal. Nujabes gets his appeal from being multicultural, a Japanese dude who recorded with American rappers. French hip-hop, like the Shingo song above, serves the same purpose.
Perspective — and I write this actively procrastinating a tricky CS125 assignment — is essential. This is why we celebrate, why we talk about our lives to other people, why we escape into fiction.
All music is an international community, whether or not any particular genre likes to admit it. Hip-hop and rap are based especially upon braggadocio, which is unstable in a large perspective. Thus, world music is a distinct genre; international jazz and classical and even rock and pop are normal. But international hip-hop — hip-hop that admits there is a world outside the neighborhood in which it is made — is rare and often phenomenal. Nujabes gets his appeal from being multicultural, a Japanese dude who recorded with American rappers. French hip-hop, like the Shingo song above, serves the same purpose.
Telstar — The Tornadoes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ybCjf6ras
Telstar, I am told, was one of the most famous songs of the early '60s, helping to define the British Invasion. They used to play it on TV and radio for interstitials, as the closing credits for a number of programs. Listening to it now, nearly... oh, god, fifty years later!, it's clear that the genre of instrumental semi-orchestral rock hasn't really changed all that much. It sounds distinctly nostalgic, but only because our definition of nostalgia is defined around the old timbres of music.
The rhythm guitarist for The Tornadoes, George Bellamy, is the father of Matthew Bellamy, who is the frontman of modern British rock group Muse, who are famous for their — wait for it — semi-orchestral rock.
Now listen to Muse's Knights of Cydonia in a new context: not only that of a direct thematic derivative, but of a literal blood descendant.
Telstar, I am told, was one of the most famous songs of the early '60s, helping to define the British Invasion. They used to play it on TV and radio for interstitials, as the closing credits for a number of programs. Listening to it now, nearly... oh, god, fifty years later!, it's clear that the genre of instrumental semi-orchestral rock hasn't really changed all that much. It sounds distinctly nostalgic, but only because our definition of nostalgia is defined around the old timbres of music.
The rhythm guitarist for The Tornadoes, George Bellamy, is the father of Matthew Bellamy, who is the frontman of modern British rock group Muse, who are famous for their — wait for it — semi-orchestral rock.
Now listen to Muse's Knights of Cydonia in a new context: not only that of a direct thematic derivative, but of a literal blood descendant.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Ghost of Stephen Foster — Squirrel Nut Zippers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sxFyu_U2go
Genres don't always stay dead.
Swing died off after about the 50s, but, like the Cat in the Hat, it came back. The musical subculture, accompanied by dance, made a resurgence in the late 90s in places like L.A. and New York, as neo-swing — mostly pioneered by bands like Squirrel Nut Zippers, with some modern work done by bands like Caravan Palace, who do electroswing, which is absolutely wonderful.
Enjoy the above video, (action starts at 0:34) done in the style of Minnie The Moocher, the famous 1930s Betty Boop cartoon with music by, and starring a rotoscoped, Cab Calloway. Note the scene in which three ghosts voluntarily electrocute themselves, as well as the dancing walrus.
Thanks, 1930s.
Genres don't always stay dead.
Swing died off after about the 50s, but, like the Cat in the Hat, it came back. The musical subculture, accompanied by dance, made a resurgence in the late 90s in places like L.A. and New York, as neo-swing — mostly pioneered by bands like Squirrel Nut Zippers, with some modern work done by bands like Caravan Palace, who do electroswing, which is absolutely wonderful.
Enjoy the above video, (action starts at 0:34) done in the style of Minnie The Moocher, the famous 1930s Betty Boop cartoon with music by, and starring a rotoscoped, Cab Calloway. Note the scene in which three ghosts voluntarily electrocute themselves, as well as the dancing walrus.
Thanks, 1930s.
I Put A Spell On You — Alan Price Set
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yxZ1F093Us
The build of a song is very important; whether performing a song, writing a story, or even meeting someone for the first time, the softer you begin, the more you wow. Often we get a sense of the sublime from this build: when we turn a corner and emerge into a large, unexpected space; when we discover a secret garden in the Mechanical Engineering Building only accessible through the basement; when we meet someone and discover we already knew them. These are things where the content matters, but the initial perception matters more.
I don't know much about Alan Price Set, but I do know about the British Invasion, and that's where I first heard I Put A Spell On You. It... builds. It starts with organ and ends with screaming, and it's so slow and splendid that the final cacophony is not only acceptable but welcome as a natural progression. Songs that do this are songs we remember. They click. Ben Frost does this a lot. So does U2. These songs become more theatrical, more memorable, more impressive. They build slowly and take their time, and they're worth it.
The build of a song is very important; whether performing a song, writing a story, or even meeting someone for the first time, the softer you begin, the more you wow. Often we get a sense of the sublime from this build: when we turn a corner and emerge into a large, unexpected space; when we discover a secret garden in the Mechanical Engineering Building only accessible through the basement; when we meet someone and discover we already knew them. These are things where the content matters, but the initial perception matters more.
I don't know much about Alan Price Set, but I do know about the British Invasion, and that's where I first heard I Put A Spell On You. It... builds. It starts with organ and ends with screaming, and it's so slow and splendid that the final cacophony is not only acceptable but welcome as a natural progression. Songs that do this are songs we remember. They click. Ben Frost does this a lot. So does U2. These songs become more theatrical, more memorable, more impressive. They build slowly and take their time, and they're worth it.
Genesis 30:3 — The Mountain Goats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hajocz5c59w
When a song is written with a background; when it samples a context, it gains and loses meaning. Casual listeners will find it less open, but it can also be more rewarding with a bit of effort. Done tastefully, it shouldn't matter.
So: John Darnielle wrote an album of biblically-influenced songs. Genesis 30:3 is based off the stories of Jacob, Rachel, and Bilhah; it is at once immediately accessible through its basis as well as emotionally uncertain — almost cryptic. The song, as the verse, is gorgeous and sublime and graceful, if you will.
I'm not sure how much analysis I can perform without burying Caesar, rather than praising him. I want you to read the verse for yourself and perform your own interpretation. There's not much left to be said about the Old Testament, I think.
When a song is written with a background; when it samples a context, it gains and loses meaning. Casual listeners will find it less open, but it can also be more rewarding with a bit of effort. Done tastefully, it shouldn't matter.
So: John Darnielle wrote an album of biblically-influenced songs. Genesis 30:3 is based off the stories of Jacob, Rachel, and Bilhah; it is at once immediately accessible through its basis as well as emotionally uncertain — almost cryptic. The song, as the verse, is gorgeous and sublime and graceful, if you will.
I'm not sure how much analysis I can perform without burying Caesar, rather than praising him. I want you to read the verse for yourself and perform your own interpretation. There's not much left to be said about the Old Testament, I think.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Seville — Luiz Bonfá
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAny1bIApcA
Sampling is an essential part of music, but it's often frustrating. There's a little twinge of rage in discovering, years later, that a song which you loved for a particular riff and whose artist you gave credit for its genius was sampling the riff from another, older artist — as if we gave credit to someone for imitating Shakespeare, but forgot about Shakespeare entirely.
Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know is a great example. Luiz Bonfá's Seville (above) is the original, a brilliant 1960s instrumental from the Brazilian jazz/folk scene. Am I mad? Yeah, a little. But I also firmly believe that sampling is an integral part of music — modern and not. So I have some cognitive dissonance on the matter.
Luiz Bonfá's The Shade Of The Mango Tree was also sampled for Nujabes' Lady Brown — but I'm less mad, as Nujabes made a career off of sampling wonderful jazz and adding beats and guest rappers. Still, I wish more of the music I knew came with citations.
Sampling is an essential part of music, but it's often frustrating. There's a little twinge of rage in discovering, years later, that a song which you loved for a particular riff and whose artist you gave credit for its genius was sampling the riff from another, older artist — as if we gave credit to someone for imitating Shakespeare, but forgot about Shakespeare entirely.
Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know is a great example. Luiz Bonfá's Seville (above) is the original, a brilliant 1960s instrumental from the Brazilian jazz/folk scene. Am I mad? Yeah, a little. But I also firmly believe that sampling is an integral part of music — modern and not. So I have some cognitive dissonance on the matter.
Luiz Bonfá's The Shade Of The Mango Tree was also sampled for Nujabes' Lady Brown — but I'm less mad, as Nujabes made a career off of sampling wonderful jazz and adding beats and guest rappers. Still, I wish more of the music I knew came with citations.
Fake Empire — The National
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prW-qgEQxBI
Music, like poetry, subscribes to the past/present/future dichotomy. (Trichotomy?) Some songs are focused on the past; folk songs, songs that call upon memory and nostalgia, hymns and anthems and choral music are focused on heritage. Some songs are focused on the future; pop music, music that asks how it can be new and unique and different; artists who try to experiment; fusion jazz and mashups and ambient and electronica.
But some songs are focused on the present; it has an encompassing sound, it speaks in the present tense, it is static and relaxed. Anything with good timbre — music which invites the listener to sink in — is music in the present tense. This is the music you listen to alone, or late at night, or when you need to do work or focus. This music imprints itself upon a time period, and demands to be remembered as a part of your life.
I first listened to Fake Empire in freshman year of high school, in November 2009. I was fifteen and was just beginning to travel around the city by myself; taking late night subways and going out to deep Brooklyn and going to midnight shows. I was beginning to realize I wanted to do so-called STEM; I would apply to work at the AMNH later that year. I was making my first playlists that year.
How can I remember all that from just one song?
Music, like poetry, subscribes to the past/present/future dichotomy. (Trichotomy?) Some songs are focused on the past; folk songs, songs that call upon memory and nostalgia, hymns and anthems and choral music are focused on heritage. Some songs are focused on the future; pop music, music that asks how it can be new and unique and different; artists who try to experiment; fusion jazz and mashups and ambient and electronica.
But some songs are focused on the present; it has an encompassing sound, it speaks in the present tense, it is static and relaxed. Anything with good timbre — music which invites the listener to sink in — is music in the present tense. This is the music you listen to alone, or late at night, or when you need to do work or focus. This music imprints itself upon a time period, and demands to be remembered as a part of your life.
I first listened to Fake Empire in freshman year of high school, in November 2009. I was fifteen and was just beginning to travel around the city by myself; taking late night subways and going out to deep Brooklyn and going to midnight shows. I was beginning to realize I wanted to do so-called STEM; I would apply to work at the AMNH later that year. I was making my first playlists that year.
How can I remember all that from just one song?
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
This Protector — The White Stripes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv_eIFpFMiA
Branching out is always a good idea; almost always rewarding, generally successful, and often phenomenal. One-hit wonders are bands that experiment in just the right way, but can't do it again. Phenomenal musicians are constantly experimenting, good musicians experimented enough to hit a stride. It's a process where you're constantly changing, but you don't always have to be changing the way in which you're changing. This is the Calc II in me speaking.
This Protector is not a typical White Stripes song, I think. They're dirty south, New Orleans soul with distortion, beat poetry as heavy garage rock. But here, they branch out. It's like folk song in its simplicity, nearly a chant in its repetition, and a sermon in its content. I don't know what to make of it, and maybe they didn't either.
I've listened to it more times than all other White Stripes songs combined. Something tickled.
Branching out is always a good idea; almost always rewarding, generally successful, and often phenomenal. One-hit wonders are bands that experiment in just the right way, but can't do it again. Phenomenal musicians are constantly experimenting, good musicians experimented enough to hit a stride. It's a process where you're constantly changing, but you don't always have to be changing the way in which you're changing. This is the Calc II in me speaking.
This Protector is not a typical White Stripes song, I think. They're dirty south, New Orleans soul with distortion, beat poetry as heavy garage rock. But here, they branch out. It's like folk song in its simplicity, nearly a chant in its repetition, and a sermon in its content. I don't know what to make of it, and maybe they didn't either.
I've listened to it more times than all other White Stripes songs combined. Something tickled.
Roll Over Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrMg3pY7hw
Music is a genre that endlessly steals from itself. Music is up-front about it, though. It's easy to identify references and homages in music, because our ears pick them out whether we're looking for them or not. Books and movies can steal plots and characters; sometimes we won't even notice that O Brother Where Art Thou is an homage to the Odyssey.
But musical homages insist upon being recognized. We have the 1956 Chuck Berry original, above; we have The Beatles' cover in 1963, who give the song a little je ne sais qoui; we have Electric Light Orchestra's cover in 1973, which begins with Beethoven's fifth itself. Then something was sparked; Beethoven's fifth became part of popular consciousness again, maybe. Disco artist Walter Murphy went gold with Fifth of Beethoven in 1976. Recently, a Flight Facilities remix of the disco edit.
Whenever one reads about celebrated thinkers and figures of antiquity, there's always this direct, easily traced line of descent; we have Socrates and his student Plato and his student Aristotle. We have Haydn and especially Mozart before Beethoven, and Bach before them.
It's easy to pick a figure and claim them as unparalleled genius; Bach appears to have had no predecessors; nor Socrates, nor Chuck Berry. Einstein had the same figure of genius around him; he was self-taught and self-emergent.
I would wager these chains of popular figures exist in all fields. Is this a product of human progress or simply human memory?
Music is a genre that endlessly steals from itself. Music is up-front about it, though. It's easy to identify references and homages in music, because our ears pick them out whether we're looking for them or not. Books and movies can steal plots and characters; sometimes we won't even notice that O Brother Where Art Thou is an homage to the Odyssey.
But musical homages insist upon being recognized. We have the 1956 Chuck Berry original, above; we have The Beatles' cover in 1963, who give the song a little je ne sais qoui; we have Electric Light Orchestra's cover in 1973, which begins with Beethoven's fifth itself. Then something was sparked; Beethoven's fifth became part of popular consciousness again, maybe. Disco artist Walter Murphy went gold with Fifth of Beethoven in 1976. Recently, a Flight Facilities remix of the disco edit.
Whenever one reads about celebrated thinkers and figures of antiquity, there's always this direct, easily traced line of descent; we have Socrates and his student Plato and his student Aristotle. We have Haydn and especially Mozart before Beethoven, and Bach before them.
It's easy to pick a figure and claim them as unparalleled genius; Bach appears to have had no predecessors; nor Socrates, nor Chuck Berry. Einstein had the same figure of genius around him; he was self-taught and self-emergent.
I would wager these chains of popular figures exist in all fields. Is this a product of human progress or simply human memory?
Musawe — The Seatbelts/Yoko Kanno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-itvSCNiI
I discover things backwards a lot, it turns out. I fell in love with the Cowboy Bebop OST before I ever actually saw the show. Much of the soundtrack is jazz and bebop, but it does range as far as funk, blues, opera, singer-songwriter ballads, classical, etc. For me, it was wonderful starter kit into the world of everything-but-modern-pop.
Musawe is an original piece, but done in the style of gnawa; set to images of space travel, off-planet bazaars, and syndicate violence, it is surreal and transcendental. It's gorgeous and subtle and entirely out of place, which puts it exactly in place. Gnawa (a distinctly modern Morrocan musical genre) is a form of liturgy: "recreat[ing] the first sacrifice and the genesis of the universe by the evocation of the seven main manifestations of the divine demiurgic activity".
Reappropriated and used as the backing music to an anime about space bounty hunters, is this disrespectful? Does anyone care?
I discover things backwards a lot, it turns out. I fell in love with the Cowboy Bebop OST before I ever actually saw the show. Much of the soundtrack is jazz and bebop, but it does range as far as funk, blues, opera, singer-songwriter ballads, classical, etc. For me, it was wonderful starter kit into the world of everything-but-modern-pop.
Musawe is an original piece, but done in the style of gnawa; set to images of space travel, off-planet bazaars, and syndicate violence, it is surreal and transcendental. It's gorgeous and subtle and entirely out of place, which puts it exactly in place. Gnawa (a distinctly modern Morrocan musical genre) is a form of liturgy: "recreat[ing] the first sacrifice and the genesis of the universe by the evocation of the seven main manifestations of the divine demiurgic activity".
Reappropriated and used as the backing music to an anime about space bounty hunters, is this disrespectful? Does anyone care?
Monday, March 4, 2013
Sleepwalkin' — Modest Mouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_PwXjCqqs
There's a lot to say about covers, usually because the songs themselves, by virtue of being important enough to have been recorded not once but twice, are generally... well, important somehow.
The original, Sleep Walk, was a guitar-based instrumental from the 50s, recorded by two Italian guys from Brooklyn that, somehow, made it into the popular consciousness: used in movies, covered upwards of thirty times, and generally recognizable, like a folk song — even if no one knows who recorded it. (Santo and Johnny Farina.)
But it made it big. Some part of the song resonates with the aesthetic mind. Maybe its chord structure, maybe its tempo, maybe its specific vintage timbre and tone. It doesn't matter.
But for a band like Modest Mouse — whose typical work is fed through (as Pitchfork puts it) "the umbilical of strip malls, religion, blues, prairies, automobiles, and dysfunction" — the song emerges unscathed. It's a little twangier, a little slower and sadder, and a little more electric. It has drums.
It also has lyrics. Written by Modest Mouse, fit to the music, and layered over. Not as a remix, or a theft. A tasteful reappropriation. Typically, I discovered this backwards. I heard the Modest Mouse version first, and then discovered (maybe by instinct) that it was a cover of an instrumental.
But by that time, the Modest Mouse version was canonized. The lyrics fit, made sense, cemented the song for me. Sleepwalkin' exists as a song about country life and white trash.
But it also exists as Sleep Walk, a song firmly set in 1959 Brooklyn, with Coney Island and Trinity Records, when a record (not a CD) would make gold and give the Farina brothers enough to live on for a lifetime.
What is it about that damn song?
There's a lot to say about covers, usually because the songs themselves, by virtue of being important enough to have been recorded not once but twice, are generally... well, important somehow.
The original, Sleep Walk, was a guitar-based instrumental from the 50s, recorded by two Italian guys from Brooklyn that, somehow, made it into the popular consciousness: used in movies, covered upwards of thirty times, and generally recognizable, like a folk song — even if no one knows who recorded it. (Santo and Johnny Farina.)
But it made it big. Some part of the song resonates with the aesthetic mind. Maybe its chord structure, maybe its tempo, maybe its specific vintage timbre and tone. It doesn't matter.
But for a band like Modest Mouse — whose typical work is fed through (as Pitchfork puts it) "the umbilical of strip malls, religion, blues, prairies, automobiles, and dysfunction" — the song emerges unscathed. It's a little twangier, a little slower and sadder, and a little more electric. It has drums.
It also has lyrics. Written by Modest Mouse, fit to the music, and layered over. Not as a remix, or a theft. A tasteful reappropriation. Typically, I discovered this backwards. I heard the Modest Mouse version first, and then discovered (maybe by instinct) that it was a cover of an instrumental.
But by that time, the Modest Mouse version was canonized. The lyrics fit, made sense, cemented the song for me. Sleepwalkin' exists as a song about country life and white trash.
But it also exists as Sleep Walk, a song firmly set in 1959 Brooklyn, with Coney Island and Trinity Records, when a record (not a CD) would make gold and give the Farina brothers enough to live on for a lifetime.
What is it about that damn song?
Counting Crows — St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6SEVMhwShQ
Whenever I talk about music with anyone over the age of about thirty, the idea of tonal shift always comes up: most music today has a great divide between the tone of its music and the tone of its lyrics. Modern music can be poppy and upbeat, and discuss sadness and loss. Often it's slow and sad but has hopeful and uplifting lyrics. The theory is that this is a new development, and I'm inclined to agree — it's hard to picture Ella Fitzgerald pulling this trick, (although not as hard to picture Sinatra); but Opera, Soul, Blues, R+B, modern Musicals, Rock 'n' Roll, not even Rap ever has real cognitive dissonance Yet modern Rock, and especially Alternative (call it Indie, whatever) does this a lot.
St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream is the button song on the Counting Crows' 1999 album This Desert Life; a wonderful, flawed, expert rendition of Americana pop mixed with shoegaze. Yet it's a prime example: a sad, melancholy song put to poppy, heightened banjo, organ, and guitar. It leaves echoes of... uncertainty?
A wonderful example is The Cure, although I'm not sure that they began the trend — Plainsong is Robert Smith going off to write a secret love letter to his wife, shrouded in the timbre of the previously dark stuff The Cure had done earlier in the 80s. It became massively popular, an all-consuming emotional statement, as Pitchfork so puts it.
It sounds sad, but it's deeply happy. St. Robinson pulls the same trick. Most modern indie music pulls the same trick.
But why?
Whenever I talk about music with anyone over the age of about thirty, the idea of tonal shift always comes up: most music today has a great divide between the tone of its music and the tone of its lyrics. Modern music can be poppy and upbeat, and discuss sadness and loss. Often it's slow and sad but has hopeful and uplifting lyrics. The theory is that this is a new development, and I'm inclined to agree — it's hard to picture Ella Fitzgerald pulling this trick, (although not as hard to picture Sinatra); but Opera, Soul, Blues, R+B, modern Musicals, Rock 'n' Roll, not even Rap ever has real cognitive dissonance Yet modern Rock, and especially Alternative (call it Indie, whatever) does this a lot.
St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream is the button song on the Counting Crows' 1999 album This Desert Life; a wonderful, flawed, expert rendition of Americana pop mixed with shoegaze. Yet it's a prime example: a sad, melancholy song put to poppy, heightened banjo, organ, and guitar. It leaves echoes of... uncertainty?
A wonderful example is The Cure, although I'm not sure that they began the trend — Plainsong is Robert Smith going off to write a secret love letter to his wife, shrouded in the timbre of the previously dark stuff The Cure had done earlier in the 80s. It became massively popular, an all-consuming emotional statement, as Pitchfork so puts it.
It sounds sad, but it's deeply happy. St. Robinson pulls the same trick. Most modern indie music pulls the same trick.
But why?
Sunday, March 3, 2013
This Bitter Earth — Dinah Washington / Max Richter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXHGoaEtmFM
A professional mashup by Robbie Robertson (of The Band) of Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight and Clyde Otis' This Bitter Earth as performed by Dinah Washington, produced as part of the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, and played over the closing credits. A complex, melancholy, and very beautiful song, I think. Dinah Washington was a '50s and '60s American blues singer, best known for What a Difference a Day Makes. Max Richter is a modern British classical musician, nearly ambient in his style.
Rarely have I heard a more devastating piece of music — let alone a mash-up. Washington's original, done as a blues single with schmaltzy backing strings, evokes sadness, certainly, but in a cinematic way, a temporary cliffhanger, designed for suspense and drama. But somehow Richter's replacement strings add a finality to the song, I think — studied in the context of the film, Shutter Island, (especially as a commentary on its ending), it delivers not a temptation for melancholy, but a definitive statement — this is the way life is. It's engrossing and repulsive in its sadness, but it's such a completely immersive sound.
A professional mashup by Robbie Robertson (of The Band) of Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight and Clyde Otis' This Bitter Earth as performed by Dinah Washington, produced as part of the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, and played over the closing credits. A complex, melancholy, and very beautiful song, I think. Dinah Washington was a '50s and '60s American blues singer, best known for What a Difference a Day Makes. Max Richter is a modern British classical musician, nearly ambient in his style.
Rarely have I heard a more devastating piece of music — let alone a mash-up. Washington's original, done as a blues single with schmaltzy backing strings, evokes sadness, certainly, but in a cinematic way, a temporary cliffhanger, designed for suspense and drama. But somehow Richter's replacement strings add a finality to the song, I think — studied in the context of the film, Shutter Island, (especially as a commentary on its ending), it delivers not a temptation for melancholy, but a definitive statement — this is the way life is. It's engrossing and repulsive in its sadness, but it's such a completely immersive sound.
Unwind Yourself — Marva Whitney
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym7IOodKeWI
I like rap. No, no apologies. I love rap. But normally I love rap for the poetry of its lyrics; I'm a fan of De La Soul and The Pharcyde and Das Racist and Aesop, for their lyricality. It's the largest modern source of poetry there is, and it's relevant and clever and unique.
I was listening to History of Rap, and they played the song Let Me Clear My Throat — DJ Kool. What caught me here weren't the lyrics, it was the sample. ?uestlove and The Roots were imitating (live) a sample used in the 1996 song (which was recorded live) which used a sample from The 900 Number — The 45 King, a mid-80s sampling artist, who took a sample from the instrumental behind Marva Whitney's Unwind Yourself, a 60s funk track.
And yet the original shone through, translated three times. It hadn't lost its rhythm, it hadn't lost its tonality, it hadn't been desecrated in any way. I wonder for how many other oft-sampled riffs the same is true.
I like rap. No, no apologies. I love rap. But normally I love rap for the poetry of its lyrics; I'm a fan of De La Soul and The Pharcyde and Das Racist and Aesop, for their lyricality. It's the largest modern source of poetry there is, and it's relevant and clever and unique.
I was listening to History of Rap, and they played the song Let Me Clear My Throat — DJ Kool. What caught me here weren't the lyrics, it was the sample. ?uestlove and The Roots were imitating (live) a sample used in the 1996 song (which was recorded live) which used a sample from The 900 Number — The 45 King, a mid-80s sampling artist, who took a sample from the instrumental behind Marva Whitney's Unwind Yourself, a 60s funk track.
And yet the original shone through, translated three times. It hadn't lost its rhythm, it hadn't lost its tonality, it hadn't been desecrated in any way. I wonder for how many other oft-sampled riffs the same is true.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Ashes to Ashes — David Bowie
I most strongly associate David Bowie with the parodic figure surrounding him. Like most figures who piqued (forgive me) before my birth, I don't so much know their fame as I know the effects of their fame. I never saw the Beatles' rise and fall; I was born into a world where they were canonized. And David Bowie had been canonized as this ridiculous cross-dressing Ziggy Stardust figure, wild and distinctive and flashy, the way I thought of most of the '80s.
But I was on shuffle and Ashes to Ashes came up. My first impression was, (distressingly), the song Better Than This by Keane. Wikipedia confirms it was a tribute, so. Yeah.
I want to understand Bowie as he was in his own era, and I'm not sure if it's possible. The Seinfeld Effect shows us that sometimes it isn't. I still very much like Ashes to Ashes; I like the synth-pop precursors, and I like the nursery-rhyme atmosphere. But it's not a clear song. It's not an anthem or a ballad. I'm not sure what it's saying.
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