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melodiousmonk · 7 months

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Peter Gabriel announces his first album of new material in over 20 years

i/o releases on 1 December, 2023

i/o is 12 tracks of grace, gravity and great beauty that provide welcome confirmation of not only Peter’s ongoing ability to write stop-you-in-your-tracks songs but also of that thrilling voice, still perfectly, delightfully intact. Throughout the album the intelligent and thoughtful – often thought-provoking – songs tackle life and the universe. Our connection to the world around us – ‘I’m just a part of everything’ Peter sings on title track i/o – is a recurring motif, but so too the passing of time, mortality and grief, alongside such themes as injustice, surveillance and the roots of terrorism. But this is not a solemn record. While reflective, the mood is never despondent; i/o is musically adventurous, often joyous and ultimately full of hope, topped off as it is, by the rousingly optimistic closing song, Live and Let Live.

Recorded mostly at Real World Studios and Peter’s home studio, the lengthy gestation of i/o means it has a sizeable cast list. Peter has kept his trusty inner circle of musicians close to hand, which means guitarist David Rhodes, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Manu Katché are sterling presences throughout. Several songs bear the fingerprints of long-time associate Brian Eno, whilst there are notable contributions from Richard Russell, pianist Tom Cawley, trumpeters Josh Shpak and Paolo Fresu, cellist Linnea Olsson and keyboard player Don E. Peter’s daughter Melanie contributes warm backing vocals, as does Ríoghnach Connolly of The Breath, while Real World regulars Richard Chappell, Oli Jacobs, Katie May and Richard Evans collectively provide programming and play various instruments. Soweto Gospel Choir and Swedish all-male choir Oprhei Drängar lend their magnificent harmonies to a selection of tracks, and the mass strings of the New Blood Orchestra, led by John Metcalfe, both soothe and soar.

Renowned for being a boundary-pushing artist, i/o is not simply a collection of a dozen songs. All 12 tracks are subject to two stereo mixes: the Bright-Side Mix, handled by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, and the Dark-Side Mix, as reshaped by Tchad Blake. “We have two of the greatest mixers in the world in Tchad and Spike and they definitely bring different characters to the songs. Tchad is very much a sculptor building a journey with sound and drama, Spike loves sound and assembling these pictures, so he’s more of a painter.” Both versions are included on the double-CD package, and are also available separately as double vinyl albums. And that’s not all. A third version – the In-Side Mix, in Dolby Atmos, comes courtesy of Hans-Martin Buff “doing a wonderful job generating these much more three-dimensional mixes” and is included in three-disc set, including Blu-ray.

Continuing the idea developed for Peter’s US and UP albums, he has again invited a range of visual artists to contribute a piece of art to accompany the music and each of i/o’s 12 songs were handed to a world-renowned artist to create an accompanying work, whether paint, photography, sculpture or even Plasticine. The dozen artists make an exceedingly impressive team of collaborators: Ai Weiwei, Nick Cave, Olafur Eliasson, Henry Hudson, Annette Messager, Antony Micallef, David Moreno, Cornelia Parker, Megan Rooney, Tim Shaw, David Spriggs and Barthélémy Toguo.

Another visual link with Peter’s past work is the cover shot. Taken by photographer Nadav Kander, it echoes with the covers of his earlier albums, always present but, with the exception of So, intriguingly obscured or manipulated.

These echoes of the past might resonate, but i/o is fundamentally an album of – and for – the here and now. Many of its themes may be timeless, but they’re also warnings that we’re living on borrowed time, both as a planet and as individuals.

(Source: Peter Gabriel's mailing list)

#peter gabriel #i/o

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lordspectrus · 1 year

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Tears for Fears - The Hurting (Steven Wilson 5.1/Atmos/Instrumental) Blu-Ray Audio

Slightly over a year after the first Blu-Ray audio disc in the "SDE Surround Series", said series circles back to the band that began it all.

Steven Wilson (renowned musician and engineer) wasn't involved yet when Universal (helped by Paul Sinclair and Steve Hammonds) compiled the 30th anniversary box set of The Hurting in 2013. Looking back, it almost appears modest. None of the tracks were previously unreleased, although many were on CD for the first time, and the concert video In My Mind's Eye made its first official DVD appearance.

The High Fidelity Pure Audio initiative started in 2012, and in early 2014, The Hurting was released in this format, but only in stereo. This disc is one of many good examples why the BD-A format never really took off: It was seen as pointless by most music buyers.

As Songs from the Big Chair was a bigger album, Universal then brought Steven Wilson on board to create a new stereo and 5.1 mix. Both were included on a DVD-A within the box set, but also on a standalone Blu-ray Audio - a much more attractive release than the Hurting BD-A. Nevertheless, the format fell out of favor. Blu-ray Audio continued to exist (both standalone and in box sets like Steven Wilson's 5.1 of The Seeds of Love), but the series was over after 2016. Until Paul Sinclair brought it back from the dead with the exclusive The Tipping Point Blu-ray.

That release, it turned out, was just the beginning of a series. Follow-up Blu-ray discs have been made of albums by xPropaganda, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Shakespear's Sister, Brian Eno, Orbital, Ten Years After and most recently none other than Bob Dylan!

Now for the 40th anniversary of The Hurting, Steven Wilson created not just a 5.1 mix but also a Dolby Atmos one (which will also be listenable on streaming sites, but the other mixes are exclusive to this disc), as well as an instrumental mix of the whole album!

Another find is two bonus tracks - versions of "Mad World" and "Watch Me Bleed" from the aborted Mike Howlett sessions (the original b-side mixes of "Ideas as Opiates" and "We are Broken", which were erroneously missing from the 2013 box set, are absent, though).

So we're getting four different versions of the album:

Dolby Atmos

DTS-HD 5.1

Original stereo mix (apparently/hopefully a new remaster)

Instrumental mix (hi-res stereo)

Plus two bonus tracks (stereo):

Mad World (Mike Howlett Version)

Watch Me Bleed (Mike Howlett Version)

The exclusivity and various tax/customs shenanigans haven't gotten any better since last year for me, but at least the offering appears quite a bit more generous than The Tipping Point. Still, I'm definitely glad none of the other SDE Blu-ray discs were anything I needed to have. (If I lived in the UK, I probably would've gotten more of them.)

As with the second pressing of the Tipping Point blu-ray, the number of copies of this disc is going to be pressed based on how many are preordered until March 17.

There's also a new half-speed mastered vinyl reissue of the album.

Store link:

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gerogerigaogaigar · 1 year

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X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents

When I saw this album on the list my heart grew three sizes and the rolling stone list bastards gained significant good will with me. This is possibly my favorite punk album of all time. It's got a sincerely rebellious attitude mixed with a heaping of camp. The day-glo aesthetics and prominent saxophone fly in the face of contemporary punk, but that little bit of deviance makes all the difference. The songs are so much more exciting for their quirks whether it's Poly Styrene's insane delivery on songs like I Can't Do Anything and Oh Bondage! Up Yours, or the 50s rock style sax lines on nearly every track. I permanently have the way she hits the R in rat on the line "Freddy tried to strangle me with my plastic popper beads, but I hit him back with my pet rat" living rent free in my head. It has to be heard to be believed.

The Cars - s/t

By all rights this shouldn't be a good album, let alone a great one. It's got this sterile synth new wave sound that is very 80s and for that it could be a little ahead of it's time. Now the hits on this album are huge, everyone probably knows Good Times Roll, My Best Friend's Girl, and Just What I Needed, but for my money I would suggest Moving In Stereo as the best track. It is more genuinely new wavey than the rest and has a synth line that I get stuck in my head every time. Usually I can actually pinpoint some quality of the music that I like, but for The Cars I think it might just be that they wrote magnificently catchy pop songs, and sometimes that's all you need.

Eminem - The Slim Shady LP

White people love to put Eminem at the top of best rappers of all time lists. This is bullshit obviously, but talk to the real hip hop heads though and they'll all agree he still belongs in the top 10. While his subject matter is controversial to say the least it is undeniable that his flow is one of the best and being produced by Dre means that this album just sounds fantastic. And speaking of Dre, the absolute peak of this album is the duet on Guilty Conscience where Shady plays the devil and Dre the angel on the shoulder of several characters. It plays out masterfully. If you can get into the kayfabe then Slim Shady's antics can be appreciated as the joke they're obviously meant to be and while some of the murder fantasy stuff is a little tasteless even for me there's just as much that comes through as intended. The biggest problem is that the joke wears thin halfway through and become just bleak for a few tracks, but it comes back around by the end.

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

The creative strife between Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno came to a head on Roxy Music's second album. The tension between art rock and sleazy glam may not have mapped to the tension between the two Briyans but the tension is there nonetheless. Glam rock was always a little surreal and this album takes that and runs with it on tracks like In Every Dream Home A Heartache which is about fucking a blow up sex doll, and For Your Pleasure which outros for four minutes with increasingly spacey drum and keyboards. A proper sendoff for Eno, and a great finale to the album.

#500 album gauntlet #x ray spex #the cars #eminem #roxy music

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flowerboycaleb · 3 months

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wanted to post more over here and had the idea to do lil reviews for albums from years past. i'm gonna try to post a review for this series, as the name suggests, every thursday!! this week, in honor of Damo Suzuki, we're taking a look at the incredibly influential krautrock masterpiece, Future Days by Can!! also feel free to follow me on rate your music and twitter <3

Future Days - Can

◇ release year: 1973 ◇ genres: krautrock, psychedelic rock, ambient

Over just a couple of years, Can released some of the most influential records of all time. If you go back and listen to albums like Tago Mago and Ege Bamyası, I guarantee you can trace them back to your favorite rock band from decades after. Their wild experimentation was not only genre-defining for Krautrock but also helped plant the seeds for something greater. Future Days, however, is a pretty big left turn for them musically. The two studio albums that came before it both had their own unique identities from each other, but this was something different entirely. The band dives into the ambient, the atmospheric, and the electronic on Future Days. All while still being incredibly influential in the process, albeit in a more subtle way. They really dive into it too. I'm no Can historian, but the only song I could think to compare this album's sound to from their previous records is "Sing Swan Song." They were also very early to this mixture of ambient and rock music. Future Days was released around the same time Brian Eno embarked on his solo career and fellow German band Popol Vuh had been experimenting with the two genres, but not really like this. Future Days was something truly unique at the time and it still sounds exciting to this day. It's just one of those albums where you know you're hearing something unique.

The album opens with the title track and it's the perfect way to start this record. You're thrown into these dissonant rhythms and water occasionally bubbling up before it all fades away into the soft, groovy bassline from Holger Czukay. The instrumentation throughout the song can sound so aquatic and even tropical at times (not to get too RYM descriptor core). It feels like you've entered another world. This feeling is amplified when Damo Suzuki's hushed and robotic ramblings come in. Immediately, I drew a comparison between this record and Radiohead's classic 2000 album Kid A, only this record came 27 years earlier. Suzuki's voice becomes less robotic when the verses start, but they're still buried beneath everything.

The way Suzuki's vocals are mixed throughout the album is really interesting to me. He's always improvised his lyrics and sang in a mixture of English, German, and Japanese, but never had his vocals felt like such an afterthought. Yet even still, they demand your attention. Suzuki's time as a busker throughout Europe and his elusive behavior after his time with Can have given him the air of a folktale almost. A traveling man performing with anyone and everyone to perform some crazy, otherworldly music. His performance on Future Days lends credence to that characterization. Even with this being the third Can album he was a part of, it still feels like he's just passing by. There's such a beauty to it in ways I don't know if I can properly describe.

The album rolls on with "Spray" which is a really awesome atmospheric jam. The percussion on this track, which I believe is courtesy of both Suzuki and drummer Jaki Liebezeit, almost has a Latin flavor to it. Irmin Schmidt's keyboards and synths shine here too, giving the track a lot more texture. His synth work all over the album is a signature part of its sound. "Moonshake" is definitely the most upbeat song here with its bouncing rhythms and funky grooves. It feels the most like something from their previous records, but still has that unique Future Days flavor to it. I love the very subtle synths all over this track. Especially when they sync up with Suzuki's second and third "whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa's." It's such a cool little detail that I didn't catch on my first few listens. Liebezeit's drumming is also a massive highlight here. As is Michael Karoli's guitar playing. It's the shortest track on the album by far, but they still managed to pack so much into it.

Perhaps the centerpiece of the album is the 20-minute closer "Bel Air." Everything genius, forward-thinking, and innovative about Future Days is showcased perfectly on this track. Suzuki's hushed vocals, Schmidt's ascending synths, Karoli's dynamic guitar parts, Czukay's unique basslines, and Liebezeit's incredible drumming. It's all here in this weird, ambient jam. It's perfect to space out to, but it rewards you for paying attention. By the time the band slowly fades out towards the end, you're ready to dive right back into the album. At least that's been my experience. Usually one listen of Future Days begets at least one more after. Future Days is one of the most ahead-of-its-time albums ever made. You can still hear aspects of this album's sound in records being made decades later. It further cemented Can's legacy as one of the most influential bands of all time. This album would be Suzuki's last and would mark the end of the band's creative peak, but the music they made in those 3 years or so is just remarkable. You can't go wrong with any of the records from Suzuki's time with the band, however, Future Days will always be my favorite.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ thanks for reading and R.I.P Damo Suzuki <3

#throwback thursday #music #rateyourmusic #can #krautrock #music review

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mannytoodope · 1 year

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David Byrne (born 14 May 1952) is the founding member, principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of my favorite band Talking Heads. Byrne has a mellow voice, clever lyrics, and a fun onstage presence. He is also known for his "odd work habits" and wanting everything just right, but in a recent interview, he said he has lightened up; he also mentioned that the band would not get back together even for money because it would lose the art of music When Talking Heads disbanded in 1991 Byrne has his released several solo albums and worked numerous times with close friend and musician Brian Eno He was asked why he started making different from Talking Heads and was asked if he would be afraid if he would alienate fans he said that they would understand and know that want to shift gears for a bit. Byrne has collaborated with multiple artists, including my favorite rap group De La Soul and it's pretty cool because the song sounds like it could have been of his songs. I like his work in and outside of music. He wrote and directed one of my favorite films, True Stories. He dabbles in photography and has written books in both fiction and non-fiction. Byrne said he had borderline Asperger's syndrome. He calls himself "an anthropologist from Mars." He has received a Grammy for his work in music. He also received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for composing music and the original score for the film The Last Emperor. In 2002, he and the other members of Talking Heads were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Talking Heads. He has even been featured on The Simpsons.Byrne is an eclectic person that has experimented with other genres of music while still keeping his original essence. He did a Broadway version of his last album that is still going strong. His parents live in the town he grew up in, although they may have moved on. He made punk for "art nerds. "Byrne is an original and eccentric artist who has inspired and influenced artists and fans like me.

#Singer-Songwriter #Musician Visual Artist #Author #Director #Actor #Post Punk #New Wave #World #Electronic #Talking Heads #Brian Eno

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db-reviews · 2 years

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#100 - Close To The Edge - Yes (1972)

So in a Google doc, I have written 99 reviews so far. 99 is the number of albums I have rated and reviewed. I have reviewed albums in the past, many albums in fact, but I never got seriously dedicated to the craft until I decided to review Neroli by Brian Eno. That was when I found a big passion for myself, and so I started this passion project to share my opinion out there with the world. I cannot believe it has gotten this big in almost a year, and it seems to never be stopping any time soon. Likewise, this reflects a bit of my musical journey. I got into music during my Freshman year of high school and honestly, it all changed my life. I know it sounds silly but I got really into music and bands through the Japanese manga known as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. That manga did things for me, and the author, Hirohiko Araki managed to introduce me to a world of music that I never thought imaginable. However, one music genre stood out for me, and that was Progressive Rock.

You see, I was not always a big Prog head as I am now. I pretty much had no real musical knowledge outside of video game music and the occasional Imagine Dragons songs that I would listen to sparingly in my middle school years. However something clicked in me when I first heard a song that every Prog head in the world knows by heart, and that was The Court Of The Crimson King by King Crimson, specifically The Condensed 21st Century Guide compilation album version. It was different for me, and probably so many others. It was music that I never even knew could’ve been made. It was weird, almost inconceivable. I could never fully grasp what it was that I loved about it, but because of that first listening experience, everything shifted. It felt like a door opened in my mind that allowed me to be adventurous in my musical landscape. Those mellotrons, Greg Lake’s vocals, Robert Fripp’s guitar, all of it made me realize what I truly love in life, and that was music. Progressive Rock, at that point in my life, was practically unknown to me, but everything changed thanks to King Crimson. I decided to listen to the full album that song was on and it all blew me away. At first, I didn't get it, but over time I realized how amazing this style of music was. I became instantly hooked. I decided to binge all of King Crimson’s discography, and get attached to the new lineups and sounds the band introduced. It was new yet I still felt like I was in Crimson territory. After listening to those albums, I was still left hungry. I wanted more of those rich symphonic, that awesome jazz flavors, and highly advanced levels of experimentation. I wanted it all and then some.

Therefore I decided to check out some bands, for example, Gentle Giant and Pink Floyd. Gentle Giant has and always will be a bit of an enigma for me, even after hearing their first album and their subsequent releases throughout my life somehow they never worked up to me that King Crimson did, even though I like the commonality between those two bands’ first albums being a dude’s ugly mug. However, Pink Floyd did work their way into my heart with Meddle. I heard of Dark Side and Piper before, but Meddle was when I realized that Prog is more than just classically enriched rock music, it could be more space-like, atmospheric, and a lot more psychedelic. Everything felt so right, I started to check out artists like Rush, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa, Emerson Lake, and Palmer. I loved it all, the entire scope of progressive rock, the longer stretches of music, the experimentation, to everything around it. It all became my bread and butter, so safe to say that I would fall into an attachment to Yes pretty early on right? Well sort of.

Yes, and I have had an interesting relationship. In my early years of music, I knew who they were, and I knew about Roundabout and Owner Of A Lonely Heart, but nothing much beyond that. However, that would all change during the Spring break of last year. I and my dad went on a road trip, and one of the stops was a record store. I was at the time into collecting records, and I still am now, so going into one always gave me excitement. I was like a kid going to the toy store all over again. I was browsing through the shelves, finding and seeing what caught my interest. Anything to pique the interest of the mind of an intermediate Prog head. I was looking for In The Court of the Crimson King since I was in a King Crimson phase in which I would listen to nothing but King Crimson, minus the occasional Pink Floyd and Gentle Giant songs in the mix. I was looking for the album, but when luck failed, I decided to look elsewhere. I wanted something good, something nice to listen to, and while at the used section, I shifted through the alphabet, from A to Y. I saw some neat albums, cannot remember them though, but I know they looked interesting, but not interesting enough to pick up in physical format, maybe stream. That was until I found something that caught my attention. It was weird. I picked it up, and the cover immediately struck me. It was a black and green cover, with the words “Close To The Edge” and “Yes” on it. I could only know it was a Yes album by the title alone, but something felt different from this album. Something about it made me want to get it. I don’t know if it was hope driving me, or intrigue, but I got the album, plus a copy of Red by King Crimson they had.

Fast forward to the last day of Spring break and I have listened to my copy of Red a couple of times, and I haven’t given that mysterious green album a go, so I figured it was a good time to see what it was all about. When the first track started to play, I felt weird. I did not know what I was expecting but it struck me as extremely odd. I did not know if I could process or even want to process what the rest had in store, so I turned off the record player and put the album back on the shelf. Tomorrow at school, I couldn’t shake that first few seconds out of my head. It felt like the album was beckoning me, like some spiritual thing calling towards me. After school, I decided to give it a full listen-through, and at first, I still didn’t know what to think. My mind did not know what to make of it, but I did know I liked it, and so throughout I would occasionally listen to it. The more I heard it the more I got out of it, but it still never clicked for me. That was until after another listening section, something snapped into place in my mind, and it felt like a third eye was opened. I never realized it then, but looking back on it now that was when I truly became the progressive rock lover I am today. That feeling of realization of how godly this album was euphoric, and even today, a little remnant of that feeling lingers whenever I hear this album.

It all starts with the title track, first and foremost. I have heard this numerous, heck even countless times. Can you blame me though? This 18-minute ensemble of 4 brilliantly executed pieces has gone on to become the best song I have heard in my life. The first movement of The Solid Time Of Change is where we get the first movements of greatness. It starts with this slowly rising field recording of birds chirping as it all bellows out into these strange and wobbly guitars, bass, and drums. That soon goes through these beautiful crescendos that dip into obscurity, only to be reborn anew. The rebirth of these instruments goes into a strange mix of surf rock, reggae, and progressive rock that is mixed perfectly with how well each member’s playing styles are. Steve Howe on guitar plays the magic, having a distinct and recognizable style. The late Chris Squire on bass, creating rhythm in the void and subsequently establishing himself into the sound to become one with it. Bill Bruford, is delicate, but precise, and has the most complex yet incredibly provocative drumming. Rick Wakeman on keyboards sets the atmosphere and is symphonic, showing off that classical charm Yes is known for. Lastly is the start of the show, Jon Anderson, with his beautiful vocals setting the entire mood going forward with amazing harmonies, and a unique singing voice that resonates through me. This part revolves around these big choruses that the listener will have to get used to through the album, and they are the best parts here, being necessary viewing points in every retrospect.

The second part of this suite comes in as Total Mass Retain, where it continues what the last part did, but in a way where it is noticeable to the listener that something new will happen. Chris Squire’s bass is chunky and full, and Jon’s voice is a lot more echoey. It all feels a bit more sinister, but still very much like Yes. When you expect a normal chorus, you get hit with a rhythmic array of randomly mishmashed versions of “Close to the edge, round/down by the corner/river” until it all goes back around to The Solid Time of Change where it goes back to normal, or as normal as it can be. It feels so new yet still feeling as though it is a part of one song, one stream of music as a whole. No matter what, Yes is a band that knows what they are doing, and when they do not you can tell, but when they do they create some of the greatest music to ever come out of a record. They are consistent in their changing tides, but consistent in their sound as well, straying slightly from the path to reach new ones.

However the most strikingly profound part is I Get Up, I Get Down. It all goes quiet, with a few atmospheric guitars and keyboard playing from Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe. Everything is now purely space-like, with no drums, no rock elements, just pure bliss throughout. Jon’s vocals here drive us forward, having this dream-like charm to them until interrupted by soul-piercingly sharp organs. When I heard this part, I thought it was kind of weird, and sort of dumb, but I was an idiot then, and now I see what this part means. It is a beautiful piece of art, one where at first you might think of it as annoying, or pretentious. While those claims may be true in some regard, especially towards Rick Wakeman, I feel like people often get the wrong view of what this type of music is. It isn’t trying to show off, but rather it tries to shove you in and let you embrace what it truly is, and that is art. You might not fully get a painting, but if you see it numerous times, it will bind to you like permanent ink. This part is beautiful as the piece of art it truly is.

Lastly is the fourth part Seasons of Man, as if reprises the first two parts we get a repeat of sorts from the birth, death, and rebirth of the very same intro the song had in the beginning, however things feel different, it feels more developed, more nuanced. It was almost like the last part was the band reflecting and understanding what to do next, and that was to have a similar, yet different instrumentation compared to their first parts. This all comes to the forefront for the best closure a song could ever ask for. How they start to play the chorus, but things feel different. I felt like you went on a journey, and your reward is in spades of glory. How it builds into this beautiful finale where Jon just belts out into this beautiful harmony as the band plays at their maximum efficiency. It all feels so right, so perfect, so godly. It is just euphoria in song form, it is more than just that, my words could never describe how profoundly provocative this is to hear, no matter if you hear it through a streaming service, a vinyl record, or a CD. It all still feels amazing to hear, even more than amazing, it makes you feel like you are floating because it is that good. It is a song that alone would make this album an all-time masterpiece, however, the band did not stop there.

Side 2’s first song, And You And I are on the same level of godly power that Close To The Edge holds, but in a different aspect. The song is a lot more folk-like, and while it does still retain some symphonic qualities, it does harken back to the band’s first three albums, being a lot more psychedelic and baroque. It is a mixture of something like The Clap, Time and a Word, and even a tiny bit of Survival, mixed into one 10-minute song. You can feel the band’s energy in this song and it is glorious. The more Celtic feel makes this song almost nostalgic in a way. The song reminds me of the fall season, orange leaves falling to the ground, colder winds, and drinking delicious pumpkin-flavored beverages. This song encapsulates all that for me, and it allows itself to be different but stands on its own two feet as another immaculate song from this album.

We round things off with Siberian Khatru, and this song is definitely the most different track from the bunch, but it still lands a soft place in my heart. This song is just a good ol’ time. It is a lot more rock-focused, but you can still hear that Yes sound dripping through it. This is where I think Steve Howe and Chris Squire are at their best. You can hear the care and think put into each strum of their guitars as you are pushed into a whirlwind of an awesome jam. Those two have become an essential part of Yes’ sound, and for good reason, because they are godly on their respective instruments. Everyone else on here is still on their highest common denominator, all of them are at a 10 even after making 2 big songs. It seems like they cannot be stopped, but time doesn’t last forever. My only gripe with this album has to be that it doesn’t last an eternity, but everything else is so divine that I am left satisfied either way.

This album has been in my heart for a good 2 years now, and I do not think it’ll get out of there anytime soon. It is an album that’ll live on in the next centuries, long after I am gone, but I know it’ll live on in some shape or way because music like this is eternal even if it is merely 37 minutes long. If anything the power this album holds on me is greater than none, and I would not have it any other way. Coincidentally enough I am writing this review on the album’s 50th anniversary, and I am as surprised as you are to hear that this album is now 50 years old. That is insane, and people still talk about it today. It shows that good music lasts with you, but truly great music lasts forever. No matter how many times I put that record needle on my vinyl copy, I am always swept off my feet.

6/5

#progressive rock #yes #close to the edge #music review

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exeggcute · 3 years

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What I’ve been wondering is...if I want to get into, say, Roxy Music/Brian Eno/etc. where the heck do I even start? Should I throw Spotify on shuffle and hope for the best? Do you have recommended albums? Genre specifics aren’t an issue for me since I like most styles but wow, it’s a little daunting lmao

so. hello. welcome to the beginning of your eno/roxy journey… I am very excited for you.

I definitely would not recommend trying to get into either artist on a song-by-song basis (either on shuffle or as like, a greatest hits thing)—I’m a big believer in The Album as a medium, but particularly with artists like roxy and eno you’re gonna have a much better time listening to their albums as cohesive units, at least the first time around. it’ll be easier to tackle that way and I think just makes the overall listening experience a lot more potent when everything’s in that intended proximity.

(putting the rest under a cut for length:)

now, that said, the order in which to listen to any of these albums is tricker. I am personally the kind of freak who usually likes to “get” “into” bands by listening to their entire discography chronologically. and that’s pretty much what I did for both roxy music and brian eno’s stuff (although I STILL have not even listened to all of brian eno’s solo albums, let alone all of his collaborative albums, let alone even a fraction of all the albums he’s produced), but I know that approach isn’t ideal for everyone. partly because it can be super daunting, partly because an artist’s sound might evolve a lot over time and so if you’re not into the sound of the first few albums you might quit before you get to any of their later stuff and miss out on some unheard gems. (also with eno specifically, he’s got a weird blend of ambient and non-ambient shit, so that complicates things a bit.)

> ROXY

if you’re up for the task of listening to roxy music chronologically, it’s totally do-able. they only have eight studio albums! in order, they are:

Roxy Music

For Your Pleasure

Stranded

Country Life

Siren

Manifesto

Flesh and Blood

Avalon

and while I was hooked from the very first hook of the very first track on their self-titled album, it might not be the best starting place for you! (their first album rules but it has a very… distinct sound that doesn’t quite reflect their future discography—for your pleasure is when they really hit their stride, stylistically speaking—so I’d hate for you to tap out after one album and never make it to, like, country life or manifesto.)

if you don’t want to try the chronological approach, I’d recommend stating with siren and then working your way through some other albums based on what you like and don’t like. and you should try to give each album at least one listen, but here’s my completely non-scientific guide for the best way to feel out that order:

(full size in case tumblr destroys the quality)

> ENO

brian eno has a long fucking career. he’s still making albums. I have been a huge fan of his for a decade and there are whole swaths of his discography that I have yet to listen to. so the chronological approach is trickier.

also (as you may know), he was part of roxy music for their first two albums before he got kicked out… but I’m just gonna gloss over that part. I do recommend listening to those first two roxy albums before trying to tackle solo enough, though.

his first few solo albums are more roxy-leaning, at least in that they’re more vocal-driven art rock shit, albeit pretty weird and experimental. maybe even proto-ambient, if you want to call it that.

then he took a more or less permanent turn for the ambient (barring a few notable exceptions), which is an entirely different kind of listening experience.

much like roxy, I approached eno from a more or less chronological perspective, which isn’t a bad way to get into the front part of his catalogue should you so choose. just for ease of listening though, it’s helpful to break that into ambient and vocal categories—you can flit between the two categories pretty freely, but I’d advise at least listening to here come the warm jets, taking tiger mountain, and another green world before dipping your toes into the ambient side of things.

(I’ve taken a couple liberties with chronology here, so some of these aren’t strictly listed according to their release date, but who’s counting?)

core vocal albums (just the staples, all four are phenomenal):

Here Come the Warm Jets

Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)

Another Green World

Before and After Science

miscellaneous/further listening:

The BBC Sessions (a bootleg album… it’s floating around online)

any random shit with Eno and the Winkies

801 Live (so so so good)

Diamond Head (technically a manzenera solo album but eno sings on two songs)

Wrong Way Up (half the tracks are john cale on vocals but john cale rocks so this is a pro and not a con)

the definitive ambient albums:

Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Discreet Music

Evening Star

Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks

Music for Films

further listening:

(No Pussyfooting)

Cluster & Eno

After the Heat

The Equatorial Stars

Small Craft on a Milk Sea

Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (technically a laraaji album, but it’s part of the ambient series and eno produced it!)

Ambient 4: On Land

I also attempted to chart out a choose-your-own-adventure listening path for eno but it’s a little crazy. good luck lol:

(full size because this one’s LARGE)

anyway the irony of you going “it’s a little daunting” and then getting this kind of response is not lost on me lol. but I promise it’s worth it. if you like what you hear, definitely let me know!!

#sorry it took me a bit to respond but as you might imagine I put a great deal of thought into this. lmao.#roxy music #brian eno #tagging partly so I can find later partly in case anyone else would like to take this musical journey... you won't regret it...

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ifuckinglovestvincent · 3 years

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St Vincent: “Pour a Drink, Smoke a Joint... That’s the Vibe”

Ding dong! Daddy's Home

By Johnny Davis

19/03/2021

Annie Clark, known professionally as St Vincent, picked up a guitar aged 12 after being inspired by Jimi Hendrix. During her teens she worked as a roadie and later tour manager for her aunt and uncle, the jazz duo Tuck & Patti. Originally from Oklahoma, she moved to Dallas, Texas when she was seven and later attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts for three years, before dropping out.

Clark worked as a touring musician with the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, before releasing Marry Me, her first album as St Vincent, in 2007. By her fifth album, 2017’s Masseduction, she had become one of the most celebrated artists in music, the first solo female artist to win a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album in 20 years.

She became unlikely Daily Mail-fodder around the same time, thanks to an 18-month relationship with Cara Delevingne, and later Kristen Stewart. Her ever-changing music, dressing up-box image and head-spinning well of ideas have seen her compared to David Bowie, Kate Bush and Prince. To complete the notion of her being the "artist's artist", in 2012 she collaborated with David Byrne on the album Love This Giant.

Indeed, she is surely one of few performers today who could stand in for Kurt Cobain with what’s-left-of-Nirvana, performing “Lithium” at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, as well as cover “Controversy” at a Prince tribute concert in 2020, with such guitar-playing fireworks its author would surely have approved.

Following the glam-influenced pop of Masseduction, St Vincent has performed another stylistic handbrake turn. Complete with a new image – part-Warhol Superstar, part-Cassavetes heroine – she has mined the textures of the music she loved most as a kid: the virtuoso rock of Steely Dan, the clipped funk of Stevie Wonder and blue-eyed soul of mid-Seventies' David Bowie, on her upcoming album, Daddy’s Home.

The title refers to Clark's own father, locked up in Texas for 12 years in 2010, for money laundering in a stock manipulation scheme, one in which he and his co-conspirators cheated 17,000 investors out of £35m. It is also, in typical Clark style, a bit of saucy slang.

Back on the promotional trail, Clark Zoomed in from Los Angeles one morning recently – fully caffeinated and raring to go. “My vices?” she pondered. “Too much coffee, man…”

What question are you already bored of being asked?

There’s not one that’s popping out. There’s no question where I’m like “Oh God, if I ever hear that again, I’ll jump off a building.” I’m chill.

I mention it because prior to releasing your last record you put out a pre-recorded “press conference”, seemingly to pre-empt every inane question the media would throw at you.

It’s so funny. It didn’t really occur like that. Originally that was supposed to be a legit green screen conference. Like, “I’ll just answer these questions ‘cos when they need to have me on ‘The Morning Show’ in Belarus they can have this and put their own graphics behind it”. But then when my friend Carrie Brownstein [collaborator and Sleater-Kinney vocalist-guitarist] and I started writing it and it became very snarky. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that “Oh, that might be off-putting or intimidating to journalists” I just thought "This is silly”. So anyway… I understand.

We're curious about your dad and the American legal system.

I have had a lot of questions about that. For some reason it didn’t occur to me how much I would be answering questions about… my hilarious father!

How do you view his time in prison?

Just that life is long and people are complicated. And that, luckily, there’s a chance for redemption or reconciliation, even after a really crazy traumatic time. And also anybody that has any experience with the American justice system will know this... nobody comes out unscathed.

You recently presented an online MasterClass: "St. Vincent Teaches Creativity & Songwriting". One of the takeaways: “All you need are ears and ideas, and you can make anything happen”. Who’s had the best ideas in music?

Well, you’ve got to give credit to people who were genuinely creating a new style – like if you think of Charlie Parker, arguably he created a new style. This hard bop that was just absolutely impossible to play. It was, like, “Check me out – try to copy me!” So, that’s interesting. I think Brian Eno, for sure, has some great ideas about music – and obviously has made some of the best music. Joni Mitchell – completely singular. I mean: think about that. There are some people who are actually inimitable – like, you couldn’t possibly even try to imitate them.

It’s a brave soul who covers a Joni Mitchell song. Although, apologies if you actually have.

No, I have not. And there’s a reason why not. Come on – Bowie. Bowie never repeated himself. David Byrne also didn’t repeat himself. He took all of his influences of classic songs and the disco that was happening at the time, and the potpourri of downtown New York music from the mid- to late Seventies… and synthesised it into this completely new, other thing. I mean, that’s impressive. Those are the ones we remember.

How hard is it not to repeat yourself?

It’s whether people have the Narcissus thing or not. Like, it’s always got to be a balance where you’re, like, “Well, I need to believe in myself to make something and be liberated. But I can’t look at that pond of my previous work and go ‘Oh you! You’re gorgeous!’” So I don’t go back and listen to things I’ve done. I finished Daddy’s Home in the fall and it was, like, “This is done” and it felt great. I loved the record and it was so fun to make. But what I did immediately afterwards was to write something completely different. But then I don’t know, ‘cos there are people who do the thing that they do just great. And you just want to hear more songs, in the style of the thing that they do great.

Right. No one wants an experimental Ramones album.

Exactly. Or, like, or a Tom Petty record. I don’t want a tone poem from Tom Petty! I want a perfectly constructed, perfectly written completely singalongable three-chord song.

The new album has a very “live” Seventies feel. I’d read that some of the tracks are first takes. Can that be right? It all sounds very complicated.

That’s not right. I should say [rock voice] "Yeah, that’s right, we just jammed…" But, you know, I’ll be honest. There are some vocal takes in there that are first takes. But it really is just the sound of people playing. We get good drum takes. And good bass takes. And I play a bunch of guitar and sitar-guitar. And it’s the sound of a moment in time, certainly. And way more about looseness and groove and feel and vibe than anything else [I’ve done before].

Amazing live albums, virtuoso playing, jamming – those were staples of Seventies music. Have we lost some of that?

I mean, I can wax poetic on that idea for a minute. In the Seventies you had this tremendous sophistication in popular music. Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and funk and soul and jazz and rock…. and all of the things rolled into one. That was tremendously sophisticated. It just was. There was harmony, there were chord progressions.

What else from that decade appealed to you for Daddy’s Home?

It reminds me of where we are now, I think. So, 1971-1976 in downtown New York, you’ve got the Summer of Love thing and flower children and all the hippy stuff and it’s, like, “Oh yeah, that didn’t work out that well. We’re still in Vietnam. There’s a crazy economic crisis, all kinds of social unrest”. People stood in the proverbial burned-out building. And it reminds me a lot of where we are today, in terms of social unrest, economic uncertainty. A groundswell wanting change... but where that’s headed is yet to be seen. We haven’t fully figured that out. We’re all picking up pieces of the rubble and going “Okay, what do we do with this one? Where do we go with that one?” Being a student of history, that was one of the reasons why I was drawn to that period in history.

Also: that’s the music I’ve listened to more than anything in my entire life. I mean, I was probably the youngest Steely Dan fan. It didn’t make me that popular at sleepovers. People were, like, “I want to listen to C+C Music Factory” and I was, like, “Yeah, but have you heard this solo on [Steely Dan’s] ‘Kid Charlemagne’”? That music is so in me. It’s so in my ears and I feel like I never really went there [making music before]. And I didn’t want to be a tourist about it. It’s just that particular style had a whole lot to teach me. So I wanted to just dig in and find out. Just play with it.

Is there a style of music you don’t like?

That I don’t like?

You're a jazz fan...

I love jazz. Are you kidding me? I was that annoying 14-year-old who was, like, “Yeah, but have you listened to Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth?”

That does sound quite precocious for a 14-year-old.

It’s annoying. Just insufferable. [Thinking aloud] What music don’t I like….? Here’s what can happen. And I feel like it’s similar to when an actor has some lines in a script and they’re not very good – not very well-written – so they overcompensate by making it very dramatic and really overplaying it. I would say that is a style of music that I don’t really like. Where somebody has to really oversell it and it all feels… athletic. Instead of musical or touching.

Did you put your lockdown time to constructive use?

If you need any mediocre home renovations done, I’m your girl. It was fun. I did – let’s see now – plumbing, electrical, painting. Luckily there’s YouTube, so you can more or less figure it all out. I did a lot of that stuff and I have to say it was such a nice contrast to working on music all day. Because when you’re working on music you have to create the construct of everything. You’re, like, “I need to make this song. But what is this song?” Everything is this kind of elusive castle in the sky thing. But then, if you go and sand a deck, you’ve done something. It feels really good. And it’s not, like, “What is a deck? And who am I?” You’re just, like, “This is a task and I get to do it and I can see how the mechanism works I understand it it’s not esoteric – it’s simply mechanical". I can do something mechanical. I loved it.

Which bit of DIY are you most pleased with?

Painting the kitchen cabinets. That’s a real job. We’re talking sanding. We’re talking taking things off hinges. We’re talking multiple coats. The whole lacquer-y thing at the end. That. I’m, like, “That looks pretty pro”.

What colour did you go for?

Oh, you know, it’s just a sort of… teal. But classy teal.

Of course.

Yeah. The wallpapering wasn’t as successful. But, you know, that’s fine. So that was really fun. And then I also went down a history rabbit hole. I realised I had some gaps in my knowledge about the Russian Revolution and life under the Iron Curtain and the gulags and Stalin and Lenin. So, I went down that hole. And then I was like “Oh I forgot – I haven’t read any Dostoevsky”. So I have been working on his short stories – which are great. And then Solzhenitsyn I really liked – I mean liked is a strange word to use for The Gulag Archipelago. I read Cancer Ward… All of them. I recommend all of it. And then, before that, it was a big Stasi kick. I can’t remember the last time I had time to brush up on the Russian Revolution.

There’s a lyric on “The Laughing Man”, “If life’s a joke… then I’m dying laughing”. It’s also on your new merchandise. What do you think happens when we die?

Nothing.

This is it?

Yeah. I mean, I understand that it would be comforting to think otherwise. That there might be a special place. It would be nice! The thought’s never really been able to stick for me. I would say that we are made of carbon and then we get subsumed back into the Earth and then eventually we become life again – in the carbon part of our makeup.

Well, that sounds better than an endless void.

I don’t think it would be an endless void.

In what ways are you like your mum and dad?

Let’s see. Well, my mother is a precious angel who has unwavering optimism. She is incredibly intelligent and also very nonjudgmental and able and happy to explore all kinds of possibilities. Saying that, though… it’s sounding not like me at all. I’m like my father in that I think we have very similar tastes in books, films, music and a very similar sense of humour. My mother’s so kind that it’s hard for me to… Her level of kindness and decency is aspirational to me.

How famous are you, on a scale of one to 10?

God, I mean, like, “TikTok Famous” probably a one, right? I’m gonna say – I don’t know about the number system – but I’m going to say I-occasionally-get-a-free-appetiser-sent-over famous. Which is a great place to be.

What do you look for in a date?

It’s been so long since I’ve been on a date. You know, I once read something, it might have been something cheesy on a card, but [it was]: if you don’t like someone, then the way they hold their fork will bother you. But, if you like someone – or love someone – they could spill an entire plate of spaghetti on your lap and you wouldn’t mind.

You play a zillion instruments. What’s the hardest instrument to play?

Well, I can’t play horns or anything like that. The French horn is supposed to be really hard. I don’t like to blag… but I’m an incredible whistler. Like, I can whistle Bach.

Is Bach a particularly tough whistle?

I think… yeah. It’s fast. And noodly.

What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we're out of lockdown?

I’m gonna get a manicure and a pedicure and a massage. Massage from a stranger. Any stranger.

What about a night on the tiles?

I will probably attend a dinner party.

That sounds quite restrained.

It sounds hella boring. Sorry.

Clubbing?

No, I don’t really go to clubs. I think in order to go to clubs you have to be a person who likes to publicly dance. And I don’t publicly dance. I mean I would feel too shy to dance at a wedding. But for some reason I will dance on stage in front of 10,000 people.

That’s why alcohol was invented.

Exactly! But I swear I would reach the point of alcohol sickness before I would be drunk enough to dance.

The effects of drugs on creativity: discuss.

Unreliable. Really unreliable. Sometimes after a day’s work in the studio you’re like, "I’m gonna have shot of tequila and then sing this a few more times, and then play". It’s okay but you peak sort-of quickly. You can’t sustain the level without getting tired. And then I would say that weed just makes me paranoid and useless. Every once in a while some combo of psychedelics can get you someplace. But, for the most part, you either come back to [the work] the next day and you’re, like, “This is garbage” or you get sleepy or hungry or distracted and you’re not really doing anything. I’ve never had opiates. Or coke or whatever. So I don’t know. I can’t speak to that. But with the slightly more G-Rated [American movie classification: All Ages Permitted] thing, it doesn’t really help.

What do you have too many of in your wardrobe?

I’m not a hoarder. I tend to have one thing that I get really obsessed with and then I wear it every day. Some people, having a whole lot of things gives them a sense of safety and security. It gives me anxiety. I can’t think if there’s too much visual noise. If there was a uniform that I could wear every day I would absolutely do that. And at certain times I have.

Like Steve Jobs?

Or, oh God, what’s her name? The Theranos lady… Elizabeth Holmes!

The blood-test-scam lady?

Well, I guess it was unclear how much of it was self-delusion and how much of it was, you know, actual fraud.

Another black turtleneck fan.

And – again, this is unconfirmed – she also adopted a very low voice like this in order to be taken seriously as a CEO.

Like Margaret Thatcher.

Did she have a low voice?

She made hers “less shrill”.

Oh yes. Yes!

What movie makes you cry?

The Lives of Others

That’s a good one.

Right. I rewatched that during my Stasi kick.

I’ll be honest, your lockdown sounds even less fun than everyone else’s.

I mean… Look, I had to educate myself. I went to a music college [Berklee College of Music] where I tried to take the philosophy class and the way that they would talk about it… it was taught by this professor who was from one of the neighbouring colleges in Boston. And it was very clear that he really disliked having to talk Kierkegaard to a bunch of music school kids. He was just so bummed by it. I’m trying to learn, “What’s the deal with Kant?” and he felt he had to explain everything only in musical terms [because he assumed it would be the only thing music students could relate to]. Like, “Well, you know, it’s like when Bob Marley…" I’m, like, “No, no, no! I don’t want that!” So I had to educate myself. This is where its led me.

Where should we ideally listen to Daddy’s Home?

Put it on a turntable. Pour yourself a glass of tequila or bourbon – whatever your favourite hooch is – and smoke a joint and listen to it. I think that’s the vibe.

Daddy’s Home is released on May 14

#have u covered Joni mitchell? Annie clarkson: ‘I have not’#OKAY MA’AM WHATEVER U SaY MA’am #st vincent #annie clark #interviews #marfa was a dream #Apparently #and that one time she posted her singing jm in the car #also that time at Newport folk festival with doveman #‘maybe that’s her shtick this time around’#’to be full of shit?’#’yah’#that’s hot

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vivisdoingthings · 2 years

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Unit D9 - Kettle Song (Song 3) + D8 Skills Development (Production)

Over the past few days, I have been working on my last song for the album, Kettle Song. I wrote it some time ago, inspired by bossanova song structures and rhythms. It is played on the classical guitar and utilises major tonality, but also dissonance. I wanted the song to sound very playful and whimsical, as well as being one of the brighter songs in the project (to relieve tension), so I utilised time signature and tempo changes, speeding up and slowing down during certain parts of the song, highlighting and emphasising certain emotions in my singing.

For a period of time, I was not happy with the song. I had tried to record it previously, and had some success, but I just was not happy with the results; it felt too naked to met, yet not in an artistically honest way, more as I song that I did not feel comfortable sharing with the world, due to my irrational dislike of it. However, when finishing the album, I had an entirely new idea for transforming this song, completely different from my original vision.

Carrying on from my trend of using ambience and found sounds, I used a recording I took on the tube in London. I took the recording because I was fascinated by how much sound there was, how everything came together, the conversations of strangers, the announcements over the loudspeaker and the whilstling as the train left the station. I suddenly realised that the breadth of life within this recording would be perfectly suited for the whimsical, carefree nature of Kettle song. I added reverb to both the guitar and vocals, in order to help them blend with train recording, almost as if they were the sounds from someone within the environment itself, like a busker. I was extremely pleased with the result of combining these two sounds; they could not have been more suited to eachother.

However, I still had 5 minutes worth of the train audio unused, so I decided I would add music to it, of a more ambient quality. Then, after the ambient music subsided, the actual song itself would be introduced. There were a few key influences for the ambient section. The philosophy and approach to the music itself is largely owed to Brian Eno, a pioneer of the genre; he referred to his album Ambient 1: Music for Airports as "ignorable as it is interesting", which I thought was an fascinating approach to music. Keeping this in mind, I wanted the music to be unintrusive yet calming. With the guitar and keyboard in the recording specifically, a huge inspiration was the intro to In A Silent Way by Miles Davis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bdBONxS-Es), in both the sound and the phrasing of the instruments. I also added bass, to fill out the low end, as well as complimenting what the keyboard and guitar was playing. Towards the end of the ambient section, I added delay to the bass, only playing single notes which reverberated throughout the track. This was done with intension of progression the music, to the point where Kettle Song comes in during the latter half of the piece.

The process of creating this piece was extremely informative, as I watched it transform from a song I was indifferent to into something I really enjoyed producing and was proud of, teaching me how valuable all my musical expressions in the wider scheme of developing myself. I also discovered that with persistence and patience, it is entirely possible to metamorphise something you hate into something beautiful.

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tiesandtea · 4 years

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SUEDE: Style & Substances

Alternative Press, May 1997 (no. 106). Mag cover. Written by Dave Thompson. Archived here.

Suede Give Us A Glimmer...

Bleeding through the debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. Dave Thompson travels to London to discover why Suede are one of the few bands that matter in an age of stars who are "just like you."

Brett Anderson leans against an amplifier, hands in pocket, shoulders hunched. To his left, the rest of Suede are playing Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross"; to his right, a television crew is fiddling with camera angles. He wants a cigarette, but he never smokes this close to showtime. Instead, he swings a keychain and glowers into the monitors. It's rehearsal time in Studio Four, a theater-sized room as the BBC, and the only person who's enjoying himself is an increasingly rotund-looking Jools Holland. He's the host of this evening's show, and he's away in another room entirely.

Later...With Jools Holland is a British TV institution. Less than three years old, it has nevertheless sewn up a comfortable niche somewhere between the chart-conscious grooviness of Top of the Pops and the more indulgent pastures of MTV Unplugged. It's a showcase for bands to run through a handful of new songs, play a favorite or two and give a taste of their live prowess without boring the unconverted senseless. Boring themselves senseless, of course, is another matter entirely, and as Suede are counted into the third rehearsal of their opening song "Trash," you can almost sense the desperation in Anderson's face. Then the action starts, and he's utterly transformed. Though he's barely moving and scarcely singing, he's conveying an intensity that explodes from his very presence, drawing the most disinterested eyes in his direction. Even the soundmen look up from their meters, and the camera crew compete for his undying attention. If Anderson weren't a rock star, he'd make a great lunatic. But because he is a rock star...well, he's probably a lunatic anyway. You would be, too, in his shoes. If the 1990s have given us anything, it's the demystification of the rock star. From the boy-next-door Weezers to the angst-ridden whiners, the message is the same: I'm no different from you; I'm no better than you; and, of course, I'm just as screwed up as you. Enter, or more properly, re-enter Suede, with their third album, Coming Up (Columbia). And all that hard work reducing idols to idiots counts for nothing. Because Suede couldn't be "just like you" even if they wanted to. Bleeding through the "is he?/isn't he?" debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and the "does he?/doesn't he?" of his rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. The scent of teen spirit clings to them, the doomed romanticism of consumptive youth which peaked on their last album, 1994's Dog Man Star, and peeks through the stunning Coming Up. Suede deal in emotional extremes, from the A Clockwork Orange apocalypse of their "We Are The Pigs" video in which armed hooligans howl through a burning industrial landscape while Suede gaze down from giant video screens, to the incandescent loneliness of the current "Saturday Night" video, in which a London subway station is transformed into a rave to which the band have not been invited. The band's junkie chic is as apparent in the stoned immaculate presentation of their latest wasted-youth album-cover artwork, as it is in the gorgeously gaunt frame which Anderson angles for the television cameras. Add a live show that oozes subversive glamour; couple that with the fearless decadence of Anderson's greatest lyrics, and whether it's all an act or not, Suede are a walking advertisement for the joyful sins of sleaze. Backstage in the bowels of the BBC, Anderson sighs. He's heard all this before. "Yeah, you can look at it like that, but that's other people's interpretation of it, and that's their problem. You can't look at yourself through other people's eyes, then worry about what you say through their ears; you've got to have some self-belief in what you are." Which is, right now, the biggest thing on 10 legs. Across Europe and the Far East, Coming Up charted at No.1 and has already outsold both its predecessors. Three singles have kept the pot boiling ever since, and the current Suede line-up (their fifth on record since their 1990 "Be My God" 7-inch single debut) is their strongest yet. Like Brian Eno's departure from Roxy Music, founding guitarist Bernard Butler's exit did not so much rid the band of one creative spark, as open the door for the flowering of another. Anderson's unequivocal grasping of the reins, only partly aided by the recruitment of guitarist Richard Oakes, may have diluted Suede's overall sound, but it has sharpened their vision to a razor's edge. The further addition of keyboardist Neil Codling fills the gaps that teen maestro Oakes couldn't plug; the Simon Gilbert/Mat Osman rhythm section is a thunderous roar that never lets up; and Coming Up is unmistakably the sound of the same great band that recorded Dog Man Star. The difference is, Anderson affirms, they've stopped pissing around. "After Dog Man Star, everyone thought we were going to do an operetta or something like that. But you get things out of your system. We wanted to refocus the band, the fact that we were virtually starting again; we wanted to readjust the basics." And did it work? "You can't completely divorce yourself from your past. I haven't got the memory of a goldfish; I was aware that I'd made two albums before it. But it felt fresh, and it felt as though we were making the record away from a lot of the crap you have to deal with, away from the spotlight, which was great. Plus...", and here he gestures to new arrivals Codling and Oakes, "... there's less of an obsession with self-importance, which was definitely a change in the band. The last two albums were quite precious and self-important, and that can be good and that can be bad." Ah, preciousness. Plough through five years of Suede press and the buzzwords leap out: "superficial", "fake", "David Bowie" - three hollow sides to the same soulless coin. But most of the people who call Suede "pretentious" are the same ones who fancy the Spice Girls. And the closest those cynics get to class is the corridor outside the school room. "It does bother us a bit," says Anderson. "People always want to polarize bands into camps, and what I always find objectionable, even with journalists who are pro-Suede, is, they always want to write about us as an alternative to this good, honest musicianship going on elsewhere, which kind of implies that there isn't any good, honest musicianship going on within Suede." Anderson resents that implication, just as he resents the accusations of vanity that are flung at him with equal frequency - the two go hand in hand, after all. "People ask, 'Are you vain?' Hang on, let me turn the question around. If you were going to appear on television in front of five million people, you'd probably look in a mirror to see what you look like. You'll brush your hair and put a bit of make-up on because you don't want to look like a pig. Does that mean you're vain? I don't think it does. "Ninety-nine percent of my career thought is dedicated to thinking about music; a very tiny percentage is spent on image. I may go shopping once a month; but while I don't think we're the honest blokes down the pub, we're not kooky weirdos either. We're just what we are." A decent image, though, is still worth a thousand songs (ask Marilyn Manson), and if it's not their Englishness that holds Suede back in the U.S., then it has to be their appearance. They look weird. Catch the "Beautiful Ones" video: Codling apes the same abstracted pose of diffidence and boredom that once made a star of Sparks' Ron Mael; and Osman and Oakes look like they're trying to extinguish a particularly persistent cigarette end. Their singer is fey. Imagine Bryan Ferry if a stick insect stole his trousers. Their music is arty. And they come on like they're somehow special, so special that America poses little interest or challenge to Suede. Other bands make no secret of their desire to crack the country, nor do they hide their disgust when they fail. Suede, though, never seemed bothered. Past U.S. tours (three so far) have been languid affairs, barely publicized flirtations which almost gratefully acknowledge that as far as most people are concerned, Suede might as well be a lesbian performing artist. Anderson dictates the band's Stateside manifesto: "I don't give a shit." "Don't get me wrong: please don't portray us as some sort of anti-American thing, because we're not. But as far as America is concerned, you can talk about airplay and videos, but all it really boils down to is the fact that America doesn't like Suede. And I'm not going to knock it, if they don't like it, they don't like it." And what don't they like? Kurt Cobain had a tummy ache, and a nation felt his pain. Trent Reznor's dog died, and a nation held his hand. Brett Anderson wrote songs about holes in your arm ("The Living Dead") and pantomime horses ("Pantomime Horse"); he equates love with flyaway litter ("Trash"), and he's never been in rehab. "I hate that rehab shit! That's one place where America get really suckered, with those rehab rock bands. Let me explain what going into rehab means. It means you're cool because you used to do drugs, but now you're a good lad, and you're really '90s, so you want to give them up. But it's a complete excuse, and anybody who says it or does it is a complete careerist. I don't think the public shoulg go out and buy records by people whose record companies have told them to say they're going into rehab. You want to talk about fakes and falseness in the music business; I think this rehab rock thing is such a lot of dog shit." So you don't just say no? "I can't sit here and honestly say that drugs are bad for you, because I don't believe that, and I don't think anybody with a brain believes that." He elaborates: "Smoking a bit of pot and taking a bit of LSD can open a few barriers in your mind, although I certainly don't think taking smack, taking coke or taking crack does anything. I know I've taken drugs before and looked back on it and said, 'That's fucking crap; you should have got your act together and stopped taking them.' They just numb you and turn you into a wrong-thinking fucking idiot. "But that's the whole problem with drugs, isn't it? You can't say 'drugs' because there's so many different factes to it. 'It's an aid to creativity.' Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't. You can't paint everything with one brush." As for the veneer of glamour which Suede's own observations convey, the danger that, to quote the new album's "The Chemistry Between Us," "we are young and easily led," Anderson remains equally adamant. "There's no point in trying to filter things like 'Don't talk about this, don't talk about that.' Lots of times when I'm talking about drugs, I'm talking in a pedestrian context. I'm not trying to make it into a big deal; I talk about it like I'd talk about anything else that's in this room." And though he agrees there is a moral question, he also believes it's impossible to do much about it. "The only way you can set yourself up as something moral is in the broader sense, by not treating music as this completely throwaway, meaningless thing, and not treating the sentiments expressed in the music as completely throwaway, meaningless things. "That's where I see my position morally, someone who can write a love song and actually bring a degree of warmth to someone else. You can't act as censor in your words; you just have to be positive about what you're doing and see that making records that people love, that people cling to, and that help people through sticky patches in their lives is, at the end of the day, a positive thing to do. There's very few things I think that are positive in the world, but music is one of them." And that is that. In an age when a star is only as big as his last three videos, and most stars are as interesting as a line at the post office, Suede are three albums into a career that means more to more people than any of the bickering of Suede's petty, wormwood competitors; and certainly far more than the bitter, twisted harping of their detractors. Stars shine, shit stinks, and the lowest common denominator is nothing to be proud of. No one really wants to watch Hootie feed his blowfish, but Brett Anderson spends "Saturday Night" moping around on a subway train, and it's the best thing on MTV this year. Who cares what else he gets up to? Turning as he heads for the soundstage, Anderson won't be drawn. "My drugs of choice are ginseng and chamomile tea, but don't worry. I'm going into rehab soon."

#brett anderson #mat osman #simon gilbert #richard oakes #neil codling #suede #coming up month #coming up era

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randomvarious · 3 years

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Maurizio - “M5″ DJ-Kicks by Claude Young Song released in 1995. Mix released in 1996. Dub Techno / Minimal Techno

First thing's first: Maurizio is a stage name used by Germany's Moritz von Oswald, a Berlin techno pioneer who's responsible for shaping both dub techno and minimal techno through the groundbreaking Basic Channel label and its many sublabel offshoots.

Here's a good set of paragraphs that outline the philosophy of minimal and dub techno from the opening of an interview with von Oswald that was conducted by The Guardian in 2015:

From the flourishing drum'n'bass scene to stadium EDM, today's dance music is waxing maximal, as tracks are stuffed with information until they're juddering heaps of noise. Even in the underground, techno and house tracks have their empty spaces filled with pillowy analogue hiss. In this environment, Moritz von Oswald, the German techno producer who has been working for over 20 years, seems revolutionary.

His work with current band Moritz von Oswald Trio is based around long minimal grooves, where steadily toiling bass lines and kick drums are playfully menaced by percussion, bells, fragments of brass and skeins of static. It continues a career-long fascination with dub reggae - Jamaica's contribution to minimalism - where vocals were removed, drums beefed up, and then cloaked in delay and echo. Von Oswald's greatest innovation was to take the method and apply it to techno, resulting in pan-Atlantic tracks tinged with dread.

"The emptiness, it gives more intensity for me," he says down the line from Berlin. "I like to listen to noise - because it's so empty, it makes the listener even more close. Even street noise, if you sit on a balcony in the middle of a city; you might think it's boring, but I like it."

Now, that's one aspect of von Oswald and Basic Channel: their ability to do so much with so little, and von Oswald's ability to do it with dub techniques, especially.

But there's another thing that bears mentioning, which is the paradox of how Basic Channel's tracks manage to sound so...basic..., yet are actually quite advanced in their formulation. Robert Henke, aka Monolake, gets at this idea in a long 2018 article about Basic Channel that ran on Resident Advisor:

I believe a very essential part was this idea of flow. Potentially something that has no end or no beginning. So many Basic Channel tracks basically fade in and fade out. There is not so much change going on in terms of structure, but there's a lot of what I might call tectonic changes, where large plates are slowly moving towards each other and colliding and shifting. So this music, which on the surface seems to be just simple and repetitive, you listen to it for five minutes and then you notice nothing is where it was before and the mix is completely different. To me, this is one of the big musical achievements of that time. To come up with a rhythmic electronic type of music that really is based on slight shifts in color, in accents, in materials, which gives it this feeling of timelessness.

So, here's one of von Oswald's greatest triumphs as Maurizio, 1995's "M5," a tune that Resident Advisor has regaled as possibly "the most perfect techno loop ever made," and "a timeless blend of dub and techno that makes it one of the style's quintessential tunes." In 1996, Detroit's Claude Young included "M5" in the opening portion of his fantastic DJ-Kicks mix for the Studio !K7 label, too.

So take those ideas—the dubbed-out minimalism applied to techno and the barely noticeable shifts—and you get a terrific piece of music like "M5." It's a song that doesn't even have a 4/4 kickdrum or a high tempo, which are things that are typically germane to the genre, but because of the sounds that von Oswald implements, there's really no other genre of music to fit this song into. It lacks techno qualities, but it's still one-hundred percent definitively a techno track, and with echoes and delays.

And the song itself is a total clinic in rhythm; there simply is not a scintilla of melody within this tune. It's purely stripped-down, bare-bones stuff. And that lack of a surface-level complexity allows the listener to really hone in on those primordial inner workings of a techno tune, where small rhythmic changes actually turn out to be seismic alterations. And that's only if you're paying close enough attention, because if you're just passively listening, you're not even gonna notice those changes, which is another kinda paradox, because when there's a song that has so little sound within itself, how does one not immediately notice when those changes are made? It's like Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, but realized within a techno framework—it is "as ignorable as it is interesting."

A lot of dance music likes to woo its listener with a big and packed, shiny sound, and as an avid listener of dance music, I'm certainly no exception to that. But it also takes some real fucking talent to take almost nothing–just an assortment of minuscule rhythms with some minimal effects applied to them–and fashion something that's equally, if not more, impressive. And that's really been Moritz von Oswald's M.O. since day one.

What a tune.

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shemakesmusic-uk · 3 years

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After releasing their album Play With Fire last year via Suicide Squeeze Records, Californian punk trio L.A. Witch are sharing a new video for their standout track 'Motorcycle Boy'. Speaking about the video, L.A. Witch singer and guitarist Sade Sanchez said "The song is inspired by Moto Boys like Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen, so of course we took a lot of inspiration from our favorite biker movies like The Wild One, Rumble Fish, On any Sunday, Easy Rider, Hells Angeles '69 and The Girl on a Motorcycle. I had worked with (director) Ambar Navarro and Max on another project and loved their other work, so we wanted to work with them on this. They definitely did their homework and came up with a cool story line. I got to feature my bike that I'd been rebuilding during the pandemic. It was nice to shoot a video where you get to do two of your favorite things, riding motorcycles and play guitar."

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Margo Price has shared a new music video for 'Hey Child', said to be the heart and “centerpiece” of her acclaimed 2020 album That’s How Rumors Get Started. It’s directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch. In the moving visual, the country star confronts the demons of her past. There are scenes referencing the time she spent in jail for substance abuse, as well as others depicting her struggles with addiction and depression. Price’s vulnerability is on full display here, and she ultimately uses it to heal and find strength again. Watch it down below. According to Price, 'Hey Child' was originally written back in 2012 “not long after my husband Jeremy and I lost our son Ezra.” She continued, noting how fellow country star and album producer Sturgill Simpson helped encourage her to release it: “'Hey Child' was a song that was written back in 2012 not long after my husband Jeremy and I lost our son Ezra. We were playing shows with our rock and roll band Buffalo Clover and occupying most of the bars in East Nashville. We had begun hanging with a rowdy group of degenerate musician friends and partying harder than The Rolling Stones…The song was about how many of our talented friends were drinking and partying their talents away but after a few years had passed, we realized it was just as much about us as our friends. I had retired it when the band broke up but Sturgill Simpson resurrected it when he asked me if I would re-record it for That’s How Rumors Get Started.” [via Consequence of Sound]

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NYC collective MICHELLE has today unveiled their first new single of 2021. Titled 'FYO,' the track powerfully recounts the four lead singers’ experiences growing up with mixed race identities. The track arrives alongside a music video directed by the band’s own Layla Ku and Emma Lee. Speaking on the message behind the song, Jamee Lockard from the band shares: “'FYO' is about belonging to different worlds but feeling rejected by both. Growing up as a mixed-race minority in the US, my self concept was warped by other people telling me what I am and am not, pushing and pulling me between identities. Although my feelings of cultural dissonance still ebb and flow, now I have the vocabulary, support system, and perspective to unpack that inner conflict on my own terms. We should never give others the authority to define who we are."

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With her new album Homecoming set for release on April 2 via Daemon T.V., Du Blonde is sharing the video for ‘Medicated’. Featuring Garbage’s Shirley Manson, Du Blonde says of the song, “‘Medicated’ is a letter to my 27 year old self who didn’t want to live anymore, from my now medicated, functioning and content self. It might sound depressing or concerning, but really it’s quite joyful. Like ‘look at how things can be if you hang around’. Shirley and I had talked about her adding vocals to a track and when I wrote Medicated it seemed like the perfect fit. She’s been a voice of reason for me many times when i’ve been struggling and it felt really appropriate to have her. I shot the video in my childhood bedroom using a green screen Girl Ray gave me at the start of lockdown,” she continues. “The spiders are a reference to a hallucination I had in my early teens where I pulled back my bed covers to see thousands of spiders writhing around in my bed, which now I see as a result of extreme anxiety. A lot of the scenarios in the video are a celebration of the things about me that I feel people might feel shame about. There’s so much stigma around taking medication in order to ease mental health conditions, so I wanted to express my feelings on the subject which is basically ‘I take medication and i’m stoked about it because thanks to that i’m still alive’.” [via DIY]

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Back with her powerful Y2K sound, Spain's Rakky Ripper channels PC Music and Rina Sawayama on brightly catchy new single 'Whatever'. The new EP Xtra Cost is released February 19. If you are over the age of 25, odds are that you can recall a very specific kind of pop that graced our launch into the new millennium. Since coined as "Y2K", chart music of that short era was flush with R&B beats, synthetic arrangements and sickly sweet hooks. Britney was the industry’s honey-highlighted princess whilst Christina made it dirrty. It’s something that Rina Sawayama has made 2020-relevant again with the release of her debut album Sawayama, whilst PC Music and Charli XCX took it to another extreme with the redefinition of what it means to be pop. Meanwhile, over in Spain, the alt-pop scene is flourishing courtesy of artists such as Rakky Ripper and her own unique blend of Y2K-meets-hyper-pop. Already gaining Charli XCX approval when the Mercury Award nominee asked Rakky to join her onstage at her Madrid show, the Granada talent shows crossover potential with her new single 'Whatever'. Punchy beats and playful synths capture the sticky heat of pop done well whilst its fuzzy guitar gives it an alternative edge, however it’s its hook-riddled chorus and Rakky’s Spanglish lyrical mix that make 'Whatever' a standout moment. “‘Whatever’ is the pop girl in my new EP Xtra Cost,” shares Rakky of her new release. “It’s my 2021 version of Britney, *NSYNC and the Spice Girls. The new video tells the story about two people who are in love but one of them pretends not to care, so the other person is always chasing.” [via Line Of Best Fit]

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Things are afoot in the FKA twigs camp. In October, the R&B star revealed that her third album had been completed during quarantine. Now, she’s back with a new song called 'Don’t Judge Me'. It's her first since dropping the masterful album MAGDALENE in 2019. In addition to a stunning performance from FKA twigs, the track features UK rapper Headie One and producer Fred again…, who’s worked with the likes of Ed Sheeran and Brian Eno. 'Don’t Judge Me' appears to be something of a companion release or sequel to 'Don’t Judge Me (Interlude)', an early 2020 collaboration that also featured all three artists. Unlike the intentional vagueness of that song, the themes on this version are a lot more direct. During her verse and the hook, twigs begs her lover to hold her and appreciate the “precious love” she sends their way with a devastating urgency. Headie One takes a different approach in his verse and goes off about racial injustice and police brutality. “Know more about my people from the streets than from my teachers/ I done a million speeches/ No justice, no peace, ’cause we in pieces/ Officer, am I allowed to breathe here?,” he raps with a conversational directness. It’s a really powerful pairing from two different yet complementary artists with voices that demand the listener’s full attention. Check it out above via a dazzling video co-directed by FKA twigs and Emmanuel Adjei, who was heavily involved in Beyonce’s Black Is King visual album. Like all of FKA twigs’ clips, this one is truly something to behold. [via Consequence of Sound]

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Girl Friday have delivered a surrealistic visual for 'Earthquake,' the powerhouse lead single from Androgynous Mary, their acclaimed album of 2020 out now on Hardly Art. 'Earthquake' is one of the band's most gloriously raging moments and sees the group power through three and a half minutes of unadulterated catharsis. Girl Friday’s Vera Ellen, who directed the new video, offers this, “The greatest love story is between a song and a video. I wanted to deconstruct the creative process. How do ideas find each other? What happens when the artist lets outside forces get in the way of an idea? How is an idea affected by us, the audience and our expectations? What does an idea have to do to become it’s complete, purest, self. Beyond anything, it’s a story of fighting for true liberation. This will look different for everyone but I hope people can project their own struggle onto the story, and relish in the freedom experienced by the characters (if only for a moment)."

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J-Pop girl-group, FAKY has released their first single of 2021, 'The Light' with an accompanying music video. This song was selected as a campaign song for the horror film Jukaimura (Suicide Forest Village), the most recent work by the master horror director, Takashi Shimizu, who also directed The Ju-on (The Grudge) and Inunakimura (Howling Village). This up-tempo and cheerful track was created to add another layer of eerieness and uncertainty to the hair-raising storyline and themes of the movie. 2020 was a successful year for the girl group. FAKY hopes to further their success in 2021 starting with the release of 'The Light'. “Our new single ‘The Light’ is an uplifting song with its pop melody, powerful live band sound, and motivating message to move forward towards the light” - FAKY. The music was composed by up-and-coming music producer, Maeshima Soshi (Hypnosis Mic, Hey! Say! JUMP, Rinne and Sorane). 'The Light' expresses that moment when your heart quivers, just when you are about to change, with the theme being about overcoming conflict and having “power to strike out into the world.”

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Kinlaw's dark-pop quest has seen her shatter boundaries. Snapped up by Bayonet Records, her piercing, roving eye deconstructs her personal feelings, illuminating electronic structures in their stead. New album The Tipping Scale is out this month, and it expertly reflects the vagaries of winter, the spartan landscapes and the self-examination. Taken from the record, new single 'Haircut' deals with shifts in her life, with the urge to propel herself into something fresh. "I cut my hair to confuse myself," she comments. "It started as a mission to change who I was, to make a new and better version, but ended with my feeling like I no longer knew what I was mourning." A song about leaving trauma behind and embracing the possibilities of the present, 'Haircut' carries some inspired connotations for these troubled times. Kinlaw says the single offers "a question of personal power, and even speaking on this song today has been challenging because it was written when I was unsure if I had any power left. I think 'Haircut' can be a lot of things to many different people, particularly those who identify with the juxtaposition of in-depth, internal dialogue paired with everyday coping strategies. There is a sweetness to it, but also such substantial, unwavering difficulty. Today, I prefer to think of 'Haircut' as an anthem of resilience and an ode to the ways we keep going, we shapeshift, and we reinstall that there is a way to find what it is we are hoping to find." The visual leans on the intimate, opening up a window into Kinlaw's life, and her true feelings. [via Clash]

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The Rhode Island born, Los Angeles based singer, songwriter, musician and actress Emeline is known for her work with Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza as well as her solo music full of biting lyrics and catchy hooks. Her new music video for '6 Foot Deep' was filmed at the infamous Westerfeld Mansion a.k.a “House of Legends.” Icons like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin have lived there, as well as the founder of the Church of Satan. Covered in satanic etchings and scratches from his pet lions, the energy within the house added to the feel of the music video. Also previously used for the Russian Embassy, the house has featured on "Ghost Hunters" for it's haunted happenings.

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The Charli XCX-crafted Nasty Cherry have returned with their first single of the year, 'Lucky'. The new track follows last year's Season 2 EP, and arrives as first taster of a new EP landing this spring. The band say of their new single, "'Lucky' is a song we wrote for each other during the pandemic where the six weeks we got to spend together felt incredibly precious and introspective. It's a reflective, sweet and spiky little song." [via Line Of Best Fit]

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Griff has premiered the video for her incredible new single ‘Black Hole’. Launched as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record in the World last week, the striking new visual sees Griff examine a past relationship through a surreal, Alice in Wonderland’-esque journey from the sewing room into self-discovery (directed by duo SOB). [via With Guitars]

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Poppy Ajudha has shared her new single 'Weakness' in full. The London based artist blends together jazz, soul, R&B, and a whole lot more besides, resulting in a sound that is truly her own. 'Weakness' is a song about love, and it finds Poppy capturing that nuanced dichotomy between the rush of pleasure and an innate fear of being out of control. In a note, Poppy explains that her new single is "about feeling out of control and at the mercy of someone else because of how crazy they make you feel, but also feeling bittersweet about it, because you’re a bad b*tch and you don’t have time for that ish." The songwriter steered the video, too, a self-admitted "control freak" who oversaw the neat mixture of animation and a superbly styled set. "Self-directing was really fun," she comments. "I’m a control freak so it was great to get stuck into all the facets of making a music video. Choosing the team, the makeup looks, directing the styling ideas, writing the narrative, working out how to build the set. It definitely felt like a challenge to direct, star-in and perform choreographed moves for the first time but I love to push myself and am really glad I did." [via Clash]

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GG McG’s latest single, ‘Good Morning’, is her first release this year and second overall, following ‘Boom’ in 2019. The song was written on GarageBand during lockdown and was produced by Japanese Wallpaper’s Gab Strum, mixed by Konstantin Kersting and mastered by Andrei Eremin. “‘Good Morning’ is about the total, complete chaos of the past year and the feeling of waking up every morning, reading the news and being blown away by just how much worse things were than the day before,” McGauran said in a statement. [via the Music Network]

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Singer HyunA dropped her seventh mini album I’m Not Cool on Thursday, singing of the ups and downs of being the “cool girl” on stage. The album’s title song 'I’m Not Cool' sings about the nice things she tells herself. “It’s really about my originality. I try to compliment myself before going onto the stage. I tell myself it’s not bad to be myself. I’ve long dreamed of this moment right now, and I feel like I’m a bird flying freely in the sky or a flower blooming in the field. I know I cannot be loved by everyone, but I become perfect with just one person’s love. The song is about these kind of every day thoughts.” Donned in exotic outfits and flashy makeup, HyunA said she “became a snake” in the song that sings “No one’s as intense as I am, like salmosa. I tried to show as much of myself as I could in the music video. I wanted to show how intense the ‘not cool’ HyunA could become when fully set,” she added. The creativity behind the title track comes from the unique minds of herself, singer and the founder of her agency P Nation Psy, and her best colleague and boyfriend Dawn. “We worked on the song while just chatting about it endlessly with each other,” HyunA said. “When Psy threw in a big catchy chunk, Dawn would creatively unfold this, adding fun elements to make it fit my style and state of mind. I personally like writing those rebellious lines. Mingling these three minds together, every day, was just so much fun.” [via The Korea Herald]

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THYLA are sharing their first new music of 2021, with new single 'Breathe', a track that the band confirm will appear on their long-awaited debut album, set for release later this year. Putting 2020 firmly in the rear-view mirror, the Thyla ethos of putting one foot in front of the other serves them well as they look toward what a long-awaited debut album might sound like. As self-confessed underdogs they've developed an attitude that aims at turning the possible into the inevitable, and with the hypnotic 'Breathe' they reach for reflective, melancholy sounds to accompany what is a time of intense loneliness for many. It is a theme that has been creeping into Thyla's music for some time, and 'Breathe' sees them further explore the idea that, in a world more connected than ever, we are paradoxically more shut off as individuals. 'Breathe' shows yet again that even at their subtlest, Thyla are capable of carving out an impassioned pop world full of the intricacies of our much-missed IRL interactions. Lead singer Millie Duthie offers these thoughts on the track: "'Breathe' was written in the early hours of the morning. Eventually we chanced upon this really vibey atmospheric lick that you hear in the intro, and the whole song grew from there. The song blossomed into a slightly melancholic dream-pop bop, it’s bittersweet and has a slightly inconclusive feeling to it; imagine a film where the main character never actually gets the happy ending you’ve been so long yearning for. The result of how the instrumental sounded no doubt manifested lyrics that held the same sentiment. The song is about loneliness, estrangement from family and close friends, yet despite this, feeling a sense of inner strength about the situation. It’s like recovering from a breakup and realising you’ve come out stronger, but a reflection of the scar tissue that resulted from the trauma."

#videos of the week #l.a. witch #margo price #michelle #du blonde #rakky ripper #fka twigs #girl friday #faky #kinlaw #emeline #nasty cherry #griff #poppy ajudha #gg mcg #hyuna #thyla

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musicollage · 3 years

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Arve Henriksen. Towards Language, 2017. Rune Grammofon. ( Guitars, Electronics – Eivind Aarset ) ~ [ Album Review | 1) Pitchfork + 2) All About Jazz + 3) Headphone Commute ]

1) Arve Henriksen makes jazz for people who like ambient music. This might sound like an unintentional insult—the Norwegian trumpeter is well trained and celebrated in jazz circles, and he often performs among Scandinavia’s most prominent younger players, such as Christian Wallumrød—but it’s also hard to deny. Towards Language, Henriksen’s ninth album under his own name, begins with a slumbrous murmur of bass and an unfurling trumpet theme, and this mesmeric register never wavers throughout the album. The melancholy saunter of Henriksen’s lines is isolated and sculpted by glimmering, whirring atmospheres full of emptiness and portent. Testing different ways to contrast eloquent material and enigmatic medium, the record plays like some lost collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and Brian Eno circa Ambient 4: On Land.

Henriksen’s long association with free-improv supergroup Supersilent and its influential label, Rune Grammofon, were his gateways to esteem in circles beyond jazz. But he has earned his wider attention with a trumpet tone so communicative it’s almost psychic, which he has described as being modeled on the breathy, insinuating timbre of a wooden flute. *Towards Language *would be the perfect album title imaginable for Henriksen if he hadn’t already made one called Chiaroscuro. Sometimes augmented by his ethereal vocalizations, his instrument always seems on the verge of speaking, writing a smoky legato calligraphy on the air. If the language is obscure, the emotions are instantly legible—romantic seclusion, piercing beauty, and a steadfast determination.

Henriksen is joined by Jan Bang and Erik Honoré, two old friends who’ve appeared on some of his greatest albums (Chiaroscuro, Cartography, Places of Worship), as well as the ECM-affiliated jazz guitarist Eivind Aarset. Together they gin up brooding, minimalist chamber music in which the simplest melodies whisper of unfathomable depths of feeling. The outstanding “Groundswell” is a dusky jungle seething with hidden birds and snakes, slow trap claps, and lapping waves of mysterious tonality, before Henriksen fills it up with his leafy curlicues and looping vines. “Demarcation Line” is a showpiece for his signature physics, how he swoons from interval to interval and bends pitches so sweetly it almost cuts.

*Towards Language *is also infused with a deep sense of history, like an excavation standing open in layers. It’s both personal—the atmosphere of “Hibernal” is tuned by a rusty harbor-bell clank, a device heard as far back as 2007’s Strjon, which suits Henriksen’s noir-ish style so well—and cultural. Album closer “Paridae,” turns a traditional song in the Kven language of Henriksen’s ancestral northern Norway (sung by Anna Maria Friman of Trio Mediaeval) into a waterfall leading to another world. Henriksen creates the feeling of an opaque jazz album you can walk right into, all timbre and feel instead of time and modality, the edges and angles sublimated into aching curves. You don’t need to be able to identify a head melody or count off arcane rhythms, but only to know the way you feel when you see fog slowly seeping through a valley, or smoke curling off a cigarette in the lonesome glow of a streetlight.

2) Following hot on the heels of Rimur (ECM, 2017), Towards Language is Arve Henriksen's second album of 2017 and brings his tally of releases to ten in the past five years. One of the more remarkable things about Henriksen is that even though the quantity of releases increases, their quality remains as high as ever. All of the hallmarks that make his music distinctive are still in place, as good as ever—the haunting melodies, soaring falsetto vocals and exquisitely beautiful trumpet. His sound is as individual as a fingerprint, the true mark of a great player.

Studio-recorded over two days in August 2016, Towards Language consists of nine tracks, of which the longest runs for just seven-and-a-half minutes. Such concentrated, economical music has typified Henriksen's output on such classic albums as Places of Worship (Rune Grammofon, 2013) and Chiaroscuro (Rune Grammofon, 2004). Henriksen has always stressed the importance of his collaborators in the creative process and, as on those two albums, here he is again joined by the team of Jan Bang and Erik Honoré of Punkt, the presence of whom is practically a guarantee of success. As before, the pair display their knack of constructing uncluttered environments that perfectly frame Henriksen and allow him to be heard to best advantage. Guitarist and electronicist Eivind Aarset is also present on every track and was involved in writing each one; he adds subtle shading without in any way deflecting the limelight from Henriksen.

Anna Maria Friman of Trio Mediaeval (with whom Henriksen recorded Rimur) sings on the album's closing track, "Paridae," a traditional "kven" or ancient Nordic song, her voice and Henriksen's trumpet combining in a perfect blend. On other tracks, it is left to his own voice and trumpet to conjure up an ambiguous mix of emotions that include melancholy and wistfulness. The end result is yet another stunningly beautiful set from Henriksen.

3) So here is how it goes… In terms of extended control of a single solo instrument, we’ve got Nils Frahm on the piano, Hildur Guðnadóttir on the cello, Mario Batkovic on the accordion, Andrea Belfi on the drums, and Arve Henriksen on the trumpet. [Please don’t all at once jump on me and point out other artists that I’ve missed or misplaced – this was more of a compliment and recognition of the above, versus an offensive statement to the ones I have omitted. Deal?] If you’ve been following these pages, and listening to the music contributing towards the evolution of this Norwegian trumpet player, then, at least you should agree, that, when it comes to breathy brass works, where the instrument completely merges with the voice, Henrikson is unlike any other.

I last visited with Henrikson’s music, released once again by Rune Grammofon, back in 2014, with Places Of Worship which derived its inspiration from the literal places of worship, sharing ten tone poems set around holy places. On his ninth album, Towards Language, we find this “major representative of a golden generation of Norwegian jazz musicians” supported by his longtime collaborators, Jan Bang and Erik Erik Honoré, as well as the “ECM-associated guitarist extraordinaire“, Eivind Aarset, exploring the language of music through the partnership with others. Improvised music, and in particular jazz music, has always established its own set of musical words, phrases, and sentences, exchanging ideas between each performer through predefined queues. A great example of that, of course, is none other than Miles Davis, who often recorded his sessions (like the Bitches Brew in 1969) without much advance notice or direction to the musicians.

“To express something on your own can be quite challenging at times.” says Henrikson, “I have for years been in creative collaborations with musicians and producers that have encouraged and inspired me. With this help and inspiration to discover new sounds and music, I have struggled and made my way to gradually be able to create some sort of language and a way of telling stories with my trumpet and singing. They have all coloured and gradually transformed me through different artistic timezones that I have passed through. All the information, concerts, discussions and impressions have had a significant impact on the process of gradually coming closer towards the core of communication through music.”

It’s fair to admit that I fail to recognize whether or not some of the music on Towards Language is improvisational or not, but what I can clearly hear is a conversation between the instruments sharing the same story. This conversation, of course, can not happen without a predefined lingo, without question and answer, without the space set to say something and, in turn, the space left to listen. It’s probable, that as an active listener, conveyed through this musical account, I, too, become part of the language, interpreting tales, narration, and chronicles, as they fit into my own sound-colored world, where certain notes trigger a feeling, a memory, or a response deeply buried inside my own psyche. For this to succeed, the artist’s ability to properly communicate must be splendid. And as a listener, I’m part of the music, of course, because, without language, the message is lost.

#jazz #experimental music #electronic music #arve henriksen #eivind aarset #rune grammofon #jazz trumpet #2017 #2010s #2010s jazz #pitchfork #all about jazz #headphone commute #review

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becausegoodbye · 3 years

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a few of my favourite albums of 2020

Jogging House - Be ... (plus Morimoto Naoki - Hibi) (plus Green-House - Six Songs for Invisible Gardens ...) (plus Denis Tremblay - SLEEP BETTER IN NOISY CLASSROOMS ...)

2020 was the year I got super into ambient music. There've always been albums I felt worked best nestled into the background, and Brian Eno's 'Ambient 1' has been a favourite for almost a decade, but this year the search took on a different energy. I approach ambient music with an extremely indulgent kind of simplicity — "Are these pretty sounds that make my ears feel good?" — and there's something really gratifying about setting yourself a question simple enough that you know you'll always be able to answer it. The ambient albums I loved this year I discovered almost entirely through Bandcamp, which is replete with so many tiny cassette labels that you can find ones that cater to every possible sub-calibration of ambient vibe (my personal favourites are Seil, Constellation Tatsu, Aural Canyon, Dauw, Global Patterns, and 梅レコード). It feels a little rude to combine several different albums into the same entry here, but for me, my unwillingness to analyse them is part of their strength. I just put them on and sink into my chair. They feel good the same way a fluffy dressing gown feels good against your skin, or a cat feels good pressing itself against your shin. This year, I decided that it didn't need to be any more complicated than that.

Dan Deacon - Mystic Familiar For a microfiction competition late last year, I wrote a short story about everyone in the world simultaneously deciding to lie down permanently and let the bugs eat us. The idea was to try and describe something intuitively repulsive to us (beetles licking your eyeballs, ants carrying off your flesh) in a way that made it feel meditative and beautiful. Then not even a week later, the video for ‘Sat By a Tree’ came out, which was about almost the exact same thing. This album doesn’t seem to have struck a chord with very many people, and I can get why: the vocals are still too shyly buried for lyrics people, and too nakedly earnest for folks who just want to bliss out. Even I can’t deny that I’d probably like this album more if the vocals were treated differently, or if it were reworked as a totally instrumental piece. But there’s a pursuit in all of Dan’s music that resonates with me on a subdermal level, and it’s carried through on this album beautifully. It’s the quest for density, for something maximal and full enough to approximate the teeming microscopic and macroscopic busyness of life. When I listen to Dan Deacon, I always think about microbes: about how each of us is a teeming metropolis more than a singular being. It’s the missing perspective that allows a person to see that being eaten by bugs isn’t so bad; it’s the most appropriate possible thing that could happen to us. (Emphasis on the ‘us’.)

Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud

Nobody needs me to tell them that Katie Crutchfield is a great songwriter. This is a classic album of heartbreak, of regret, of sobering up: a splint on an arm that’s still holding onto what it’s lost. The lyrics are pitched at this particular allegorical intensity – hells, landslides, scientific cryptograms – and the country-inflected indie-rock instrumentation largely has the sense to simply get out of the way. There’s a sympathetic wisdom to the songs here, focused less on the worst intensities of grief than on the life you figure out how to live afterwards. It’s an arm on your shoulder and an eye to the horizon.

“You might mourn all that you wasted That's just part of the haul Tangling up all your good fortune Bearing the heart of the fall You won't break it after all”

Dirty Projectors - 5EPs This is silly, incautious conjecture on my part, but Dave Longstreth feels like he's putting in the work of redemption. I was close to writing him off after the arch bitterness of 2017's self-titled record (a break-up album that was nauseatingly heavy on the arrogant self-righteousness), but 2018's Lamp Lit Prose did a lot to re-interest me. Its smile felt forced at times, but its melodies and rhythms were undeniable: reminders of why I was invested in this asshole in the first place. This year, Dirty Projectors put out five separate EPs, the first four each with different lead singers, then everyone coming together on the fifth. It feels as though Longstreth is making a conscious effort to bite his tongue, to clutch his micromanaging hand under the table, so that everyone else can have a chance to breathe and actually enjoy being in this band. The result is a collection of songs with a really pleasurable lightness: not the tortured and perfectionistic Artistic Statements that Longstreth's been prone to over the years, but a pigeon's glide, a coin's flash -- a less ponderous engagement with Longstreth's peculiar musical gravity. It's a lovely bunch of songs even without this projected-on story about Longstreth's personal growth, but try as I might, I can't not hear that story.

Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher

Ambient soothing aside, life's complications still exist, and Phoebe Bridgers is the queen of them. She's the only musician who seems like she thrived in quarantine, somehow cotton-candy-swirling all this loneliness and introspection and yearning and 'fuck it' into an album that feels miraculous and inexhaustible. Punisher is without doubt my favourite album of the year. It's anxious, funny, miserable, and sly. It's a dog-shaped helium balloon majestically floating into the stratosphere. I can't say enough good things about the production side of it, which maintains this perfect illuminated-manuscript balance of enhancing the text/song/scripture without ever overshadowing it. At the centre of it, though, is a songwriter who's figured out how to make every song its own entire world, keening and quaking in resonance with whatever you're going through. This has been a shit sad year, and it’s been a lot better facing that with this album than without it. No question, Phoebe was the year’s MVP.

#these get harder to do every year #but I always regret it if I don't at least write *something* I can go back to later #there are a lot of other albums I've really liked this year but I'm not sure I really have much cogent to say about them #things are really shit right now #but music #...#music's still really good

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