Music w/o lyrics?

I've read a few comments that music with lyrics sucks, is lame ect. What exactly is this point of view? Is it that lyrics are lame, or singing is passe, over? I'm really not sure how this could be true, but maybe I'm missing something. What is the best Jay-Z record?

If there is one musical phenomenon that i can't stomach, it is ironic metal.  i believe that if you decide to play metal you should mean it, and you should fuck everyone's face as hard as you can.  that said, i offer you high on fire.  i'm not a huge metal head, but i truly enjoy quality.  this is a quality record.  

high on fire are not wanky. wankiness is a characteristic of many metal acts that doesn't always work for me.  these guys are firmly rooted in the grand traditions of metal that were established before the hair metal era, and they don't nothing like a retro act.  they seem to have put aside many of the negative qualities that the genre has introduced over the years and decided to play with a good blend of hardness, a reasonable tempo, and a smattering of sensitive melody.  if you would like to listen to some good solid metal, you should check them out.  they are on man's ruin.  this record came out in 2007.  

i swear i won't post only metal.  i was just shuffling through itunes, and i hit this.  it made my breakfast better.

    

yours truly, 

jim 

The Scoobie Brothers

The new Scoobie Brothers joint is pretty good, I found their music video on the YouTube

"B.O.T." from the forthcoming LP "Darkside (of the Scoob)"

West Siiiiiide!

Out of that dystopian musical hotbed; Olympia, WA, Unwound played some fierce post rock/noise you can dig. Repetition is from 1996, you can definitely hear the Sonic Youth/Fugazi/June of 44 vibes happening. I saw them bitd when I lived in S.F. Ator may have as well? The rhythm section is rockin, and if you think chicks can't play drums check this disc out. There is even a dub sounding track. On some tracks the guitar and bass seem to fighting for the spotlight, there are some interesting bass lines to be heard. Kill Rock Stars put this out. Rock is not dead, you may just have to dig in the archives to find a gem or two!

speaking of reggae......

To me, it's all about the mix (as in, usually, "various artists"), and this is one of the best Ive yet to hear. Yes, there have been a ton of Trojan Records retrospectives over the years, but DJ Spooky picks out some real gems, and gets the sequencing and everything just right. Also, speaking of copyright law and sharing music, its interesting to see on this album how these early reggae artists liberally borrowed from each other and from other popular music. You get Lee "Scratch" Perry fucking around with Max Romeo's "Chase the Devil", a Beatles cover, and various takes on the Dave Brubeck classic "Take Five", among others.

Highly recommended for: driving in your car, sipping wine on a Sunday night, or whenever else you need some good vibrations

nyahbinghi

What's up, broheims. First of all want to just thank you all for getting down with the blog. I just assumed you guys would all write back "hahaha, that idea is gay. peace." because we're good like that, but it's really blowing up. So many different styles have been represented: From gay indie rock with lyrics to massive stoner southern california rock to obscure soundtracks to peruvian psychedlic to the bleep bleep bloop bleep Warp records shit... it has definitely been diverse.

One style we haven't tapped into yet is reggae. I might do a reggae week. One good friend kicked me a TON of KKKIIIIILLLLLLEEEERRRRRRRR reggae shit. I will not call him out as he is in immersed in the bootleg/trade scene, with like invite-only sharing sites who ostracize anyone who dares to convert a file to MP3 (the nerve!) Anyway, god bless him because now my reggae collection is deeeep. Plus all the recs I have on vinyl, of course.

Right now I'm bumping this Sons of Negus joint, "Freedom Sounds". It's nyahbinghi which is basically like a reggae rastafarian stoner drum circle. Yes, I know "rastafarian stoner" is redundant. It's great, though. Extremely spiritual, good melodies, shredding reggae guitar solo, chanting , hand percussion, and a bunch of guy shouting out "rastafarian! king of kings!" and shit like that. Lots of "Holy Mt. Zion" talk. Everything good about reggae music right here. This is bomb.

Another CD I just got off iTunes that is in the same vein is Count Ossie and The Mystic Revealation of Rastafari, "Grounation". This is a classic, similar to the above but with tons of drummers and with skronking, almost free jazz saxophone solos. And this one track IS drum and bass. It's crazy, it sounds like a Tricky record or something. It's that classic drum and bass beat for like 15 minutes with Holy Mt Zion shit on top. EJ, I will hook you up with this at next sesh.

The Count Ossie shit is especially noteworthy because it is some rare, $100 on eBay type shit, and it is some how on iTunes for $9.99. I also found this super duper rare 70's Psych record, Henry Tree "Electric Holy Man" (another $100 record) on iTunes for like $6.99! So, any record collector types out there, don't be afraid to check iTunes on a whim for the reissue and save yourself a buck or two like 10-10-220, smell me?

Lastly, here is a YouTube clip of Sons of Negus. I do my homework.



Some of you other guys... start posting or I'm going to call you out by name. "ATOR", I'm looking in your direction.

dc

Rogue Wave

I was sitting by the pool this Saturday next to this girl and I wish her looks were as interesting as her musical tastes. We geeked out for a while about music talking about bands we both liked and each gave each other new things to check out. I told her about Bon Iver, Plants & Animals and Pinback; she told me about Rogue Wave, Vetiver and the Mountain Goats. I've since downloaded Rogue Wave and I'm checking that out today, digging it. For those of you more into the song-writery stuff than the "bleep-bleep" electronic music, this is for you. It sounds to me like The Shins or Death Cab for Cutie (I hate that name).

Introduction & She & Him

First of all, thanks to Don for inviting me to participate in this blog. I've already checked out El Ten Eleven, hopefully I can contribute something. Before I get started with a music review, does anybody dig the original "Rollerball" movie? I did and do - it's just been on my mind lately. Here's a small review of a band that you've probably already heard way too much about - I'm sure they've been referred to as the "darlings of indie rock" at least a zillion times, but I'm posting it anyway since I listen to it a lot.

--------------------------------

She & Him Volume One

I've been listening to more bands with female vocalists in the past year.
One album that has been in constant rotation on my iPud is "She & Him Volume One". Often I will wake up with a snippet of a band's song lyrics repeating in my head, if the repetition is not driving me nuts, I take this as a good sign, this is one of those albums.

Zooey's sings with an almost lackadaisical voice. At the very beginning of the Beatle's cover, she even sounds out of tune (to my untrained ear). Every time I hear those first 2 seconds of her voice, I wonder if she'll be able to bring that note back, and like magic, she does every time.

I believe that all of these songs are covers, they range from 50's love ballads to spiritual hymns (Swing Low). Some of the songs I recognize from my childhood - the car radio or my parent's albums. It sounds cliche to say the duo "breathe new life" into the songs, but I just find every song so addicting. The slacker way that she sings and M. Ward's small instrument arrangement is just enough to get you hooked, but just under the level of causing the listener to get sick of the tune, which could easily have happened given that these are primarily love songs.

I usually listen the album in its entirety without skipping a single track, but my personal favs are: Black Hole, This Is Not a Test, I Thought I Saw Your Face Today, Sweet Darling.

She & Him

Aphex Twin

Checking out disc 1 of Aphex Twin's double CD "Drukqs". This is one of the weirder albums I have because he veers from bizarre techno sounds to wistful piano melodies in between; and then some tracks, like"Gwarek2", are random noises and ominous background sounds. I like the transition from Cock/Ver10 into Avril 14th into Mt. Saint Michel Mix. I really don't like techno, it makes me think of spending wasted nights in cavernous clubs in central Europe, horny and filled with angst at not connecting with the music or the Eurotrash donkeys I used to encounter in places like that. But there is something about Aphex Twin that is a cut above the schlock (one of the other exceptions for me is Burial, but that's more downtempo stuff). There is something that is always melodic and intelligent (not to mention beautiful) in his music that saves it and makes it interesting. I guess the song titles are from some esoteric Cornish language. Some songs sound like robot orgies that degenerate into violent chaos, and then the piano songs sound like codas to classic 70s rock albums, played by drugged out lead singers. His double album of ambient tracks is one of my favorite chill-out albums ever. Then there is this guy's whole thing about sticking his head on top of the body of bikini babes (check out some of his videos), which makes me uncomfortable, which is perhaps the point.

Tree Colored See

There's something about this record that really gets to me. This is one of the records I took on a Zen retreat. Its atmospheric sounds, simple melodies, and melancholic lyrics haunted me the whole time.

It's an amazing collaboration between Nobody (DJ/producer/soundscaper) and Mystic Chords Of Memory (a quiet folk/rock duo from LA, I think) that makes for a very mellow yet passionate recording.

Nobody, on his own, is ok; nothing that would make it blog-worthy for me though. (DC gave me Nobody's record Pacific Drift, which I liked but it soon found its way out of the CD player and into storage.) Same goes for MCOM, who's delicate folk/rock arrangements leave me with the word "wussy" on my mind.

Together, however, they compliment each other perfectly by filling in each other's deficiencies; Nobody gives some much-needed balls to MCOM's sleepy arrangements, while MCOM lends melody, lyrics, and cohesive song form to Nobody's beats and ear candy.

So in light of the recent thread of, "Where's the rock? What's up with the bleepy bloopy Warp crap?" and, "Lyrics are worthless, rock is over, let those four played-out chords die already," I feel this is the perfect bridge, the best of both worlds.

The Junks

Hope I'm not putting my man and future fellow contributor Mike Bolsinga on the spot with this, but this blog is about the hot new shit that we're listening to, and right now this is it for me.

Mike and his buddy got a 5 track EP up on their Myspace page under moniker "The Junks".

www.myspace.com/thejunksound

I think it's dope. Self-described as "a couple of visual artists that got into music with no idea, but it turned out all right", this shit is raw and rough around the edges but ultimately pretty brilliant. It's got that fast, 4-track feel (like first Latin Playboys CD, if you feel that) that makes it more urgent.

The other reason I wanted to post this is to present the flip side to the whole "stealing music" technology debate. I love this era. I love the new technology. I love the fact that 2 creative dudes with Garageband, some random instruments laying around (I think i'm hearing a drum machine, casio, and a guitar?), a little inspiration and a myspace account can put a 5 song EP out to the WORLD. Some dude in Japan may be bumping this. Fuck a record label. DYI has never been easier. Also, this doesn't have a business plan or a marketing strategy, this is art for art's sake and that comes through. Kudos.

So all you lazy motherfuckers get off you asses and go make something.

dc

Raconteurs; Freedom Rock for the OO's!

If you need some rock, check this out. There is the Jack White weirdness, plenty of rock guitar, horns, piano breaks, fuzzed out bass, a little country violin. I read some bad reviews. Maybe people are afraid to rock, but I dig it. Track 10: Attention, is rock man! Turn it up!

Seems like Portland is the place on everyone's tongue.  When I think of Portland, I think of the infamous, long-lost Kelly boys, and when I think of the Kelly boys, I think of The American Astronaut.  We're talking grainy black-and-white, space Western rock opera, here, people.

If you plan on checking this out, I highly recommend watching the movie in its entirety before picking up the soundtrack;  you'll get a more associative experience, and the songs will actually make some sense.

The style here is quirky and wide ranging, but not in a forced, self-concious way.  I think these dudes are just kooks.   A very unique aesthetic.  Some of my favorite guitar work is in/on this movie/album.  Nothing flashy-flash, but melodic, intricate, sensitive to the song at hand.  "Like Nothing You've Ever Heard" is one of my all-time top tracks (DC:  this one's got no lyrics, so it sucks way less).

I've never had the opportunity to realm these guys' other stuff, so...

Valet

What up, fellas. Jeff “Forty” Fortson’s comment about “What’s with all the goddamn bleep bleep bloop bleep bullshit! Isn’t there a good all American verse-chorus-verse rock band?” has been haunting me, and I wanted my next post to be “Here’s your #1 rock band, motherfucker… BLAOWHH!”

But, unfortunately, perusing the iPhone, I got nothing in the old verse-chorus-verse department, and to the contrary the best thing I’ve gotten in a long, long time is on the other end of the spectrum.

My man Hurewitz (or should I call him “Rootless”? Are we only using blog code names here?) gave me a CD by this band “Valet” called “Naked Acid”. They (she?) is from Portland, Or and i guess that whole scene.

For me, personally, where I’m at with music, it could not be more spot on. Hahaha, Hurewitz actually said when he gave it to me “this is almost unfair… this is like a parody of DC’s favorite band”.

Equal parts ambient noise, weird sounds (but very organic, not harsh electronic noises), samples and loops of weird percussion, esoteric 80’s synths, wah wah guitars, tons of delay. Female vocals reminiscent of Christina Carter of Charalambides, if you are hip to that. Real mellow, but a few jams that rock. Real super sloppy guitar solos, like guitar solos on a Beck album that are almost comically bad, but fit in perfectly with the rest of the music… like, how could this part NOT be included? At times sounds like Brian Eno/John Hassell “Fourth Worlds”. All really guitar-based, which keeps it from being super freak out. Really, on scale of 1 to 10 of weirdness it’s only like a 6 or 7. Has a real lo-fi, 4-tracky feel to it, which I always like. And check the fucking cover artwork. Slam dunk.

This is absolutely the best thing I’ve gotten in a long time. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION if anything written above sparks any interest.

Fortson, I’ll find a rock band for the next post.

dc

techno spoons

this is a pretty decent electronica record from simian mobile disco.

but i really love it because the cover is rad. the cover type is composed of spoons laid in grass and shot from a high bird's eye angle. type dork note: the spoon type follows the forms of trade gothic condensed bold no. 20.

Ambient Soundscapes

The first Mount Analog release, Tucker Martine is the engineer/producer/guru. Here is a qoute,"...magnificiently subtle meditations on the prehistory of the digital age." Sounds like the soundtrack to a Stanley Kubrick flick.

¡Dame más Chicha!

There is nothing to not like about this music:

Psychedelic ear candy.
Surf guitars.
Cumbia rhythms.
Highly melodic.
Melodramatic Spanish lyrics. ("Don't withhold your mouth from me, or I will die of pain.")

Chicha Libre is a style from Peru that today is kinda lame. But when this shit was coming about in the late 60s, it was truly awesome; a perfect mix of dance-able rhythms, wah-wah guitars, traditional Peruvian melodies, and melancholic lyrics.

Barbés Records did a really good job with this compilation. They got all the major bands of that time (including Los Hijos Del Sol...fuck yeah!) and all the different flavors and nuances of the emerging Chicha movevent.


Plus how can you not be into a band that looks like this:

Sco Jo

One CD that I got passed to me (that I would not have bought with real money in 100,000 years) is the new Scarlett Johansson joint. Hahaha, bet you didn’t expect to see that up here! I don’t even know what it’s called, I just been calling it the ScoJo joint.

My buddy passed it on to me in a music trade, and to my surprise… it didn’t suck! The fact that it is noteworthy that it achieved “doesn’t suck” status is a statement to how low the bar has been set by Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton (cover done by Varnish Studios, by the way), et al… or even Don Johnson in the 80’s or any other shitty album made by an actor or “celebrity”.

The music is pretty good, indie rock type stuff, sonically interesting. Her monotone vocals are at least slathered with reverb and delay, and it is all Tom Waits covers (?!?!!!) WTF?

So, for those reasons, plus apparently Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio produced some of it, I consider the existence of this CD noteworthy and thusly have posted on the blog.

Also gives me context to post this:



Stay up, bros.

dc

NYC 1986

I had this on vinyl when it came out in '86. Clocking in at 33 minutes for 15 songs, this is hardcore bombast at its finest. My favorite line,"If AIDS don't getcha then the warheads will". The whole AIDS and nuclear war theme is very 80's. Hare Krishna hardcore? Classic I say!

preaching purchasing

since we are talking music....

i just wanted to mount my soap box and encourage everyone to BUY their music. i can say that over my past 9 years in "the biz" i have seen the impact of people stealing music.... from mass firings, slumping sales, and directly on my profession.

i know there are all those wonderfully gray nuances and the "i listen and then if i like it i buy" arguments, but at the end of the day, you know when you bought something, were given something and when you stole it. so do the right thing! i have a family of four now.

thank you and that is all.

i like indie pop, also. what?

i guess we would call it "indie synth-rock pop" to be precise...? i dunno.
i just know this is on heavy heavy rotation at the studio.

I got all that Boards of Canada shit on vinyl:



Sorry, I've got to use this as a forum to brag about my record collection when I can...

Angst-riddled Indie Rock

Don Chase a few years ago made his now famous statement that "all music with lyrics suck", which we should all pause and just actually ponder for a moment. There is a lot of esoteric music that everyone is talking about so far (Boards of Canada, El Ten Eleven), all of which I love, but let's hear it for lyrics! Up with angst! Lately I'm into the Seattle band The Fleet Foxes, I heard they sound a little like Crosby, Stills and Nash, and they do some vocal harmonizing, but they don't really sound like that. Check out the last two tracks on the album, "So Long to the Headstrong" and "Icecicle Tusk", just great song-writing. This band is really popular right now, sold out the Bowery Ballroom really quickly in October (Don: should I spend $50 for a ticket?). I'm also into Bon Iver (also a tough ticket but I got one for a show in December at Terminal Five).

Canada is Cool Yo!

This duo is from Scotland I believe. Lots of synth, overdubs, melodic, spaced out, electronica jams. They really like to layer the tracks. Skyliner is the standout track for me.

El Ten Eleven

El Ten Eleven is another new good'n I actually got from Damon Dunbar. Kind of like Matt's post (Varnist Studio) below, these guys are on some post rock shit. This band sounds EXACTLY like if the first Tortoise album had a baby with Pinback. Good stuff. Exaclty like that.

Guess they are from San Diego or LA or something and it's a two piece and the guy plays a 2 headed guitar with bass and guitar or something.

recent dashboard slappers

Loving that last Black Mountain, no it's not really a "find" but I can't get over how well they do it.  Also "Strange Pleasures/Further sounds of the Decca Underground", I'm a sucker for all those paper boxed 70's british label sets. Hadn't heard Ghost Reveries by Opeth in a few years, If you can deal with the Cookie Monster vocals it has some amazingly epic/evil moments. Ornette & Pat's Song X, Laurie Anderson's Big science, that Moterpsycho double set they put out before the last one......

this will destroy you

these guys have two releases. currently listening to the "young mountain" E.P....
their record label is really cool too, check them out..they have sweet album art and cool limited edition vinyl: magic bullet records

i have been feeling the post-rock instrumental stuff as of late. excellent work music for me. heroic, epic, jam out and imagine you are are riding a horse through the country side with a large double-edged axe off to battle in slow motion... or not. my only beef is, as i learn more of the genre, there seems to be an overall lack of sonic variety...too much of it and it will begin to all sound the same. explosions in the sky are also a fave. word.

Bow Before Earthless

Earthless, Rythms From the Cosmic Sky, is pretty much the sickest shit I've heard in a long time.  Two tracks, twenty minutes each.  Steamroller.

I don't want to get too domestic, but try cleaning your house to this shit.  It'll fill you with the overwhelming need to punch a dust bunny in the face.

New Music From the Left Coast

These CD's aren't that new, they've been out for a minute:

Flying Lotus, "Los Angeles"



Hot shit new producer out of LA, Flying Lotus. This CD is great. In the J Dilla/Madlib/Prefuse 73 tradition: weird sounds, unquantized (non-quantized?) beats, bleeps and bloops, but on top of all that there is some intangible something that makes this CD something really good. A lot of this kind of stuff, like last three Prefuse 73 jams, are listen-to-it-non-stop-for-2-weeks-and-then-never-listen-to-it-again type joints, but this one has something that makes it feel like a classic. iTunes says I have listened to this 23 times since I got it.

PLUS, this guy is John Coltrane's 2nd cousin or something, and its put out on Warp Records. What a killer label... everything they put out is dope: Prefuse, Autechre, Squarepusher... but also Battles, as well as that Grizzly Bear joint. Warp Records, nothing but respect.

Also...

Yesterday's Universe (Madlib)



In case you don't know, Yesterday's New Quintet is one of the many projects of producer/musician/artist Madlib who has more personalities than Sybil (Quasimoto, DJ Rels, Madvillian, Beat Konducta, etc.).

Yesterday's New Quintet is basically him playing all the instruments. This equates to him playing drums, and then playing all kinds of keyboards on top sloppy joe style. Sometimes this sounds like a guy who smokes too much herb messing around in his basement (a true statement). At times it is really great. This one is definitely the latter.

On this one, the CD is set up like a compilation of all his groups (Otis Jackson Jr. Trio, Karriem Riggins Trio, The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble, Kamala Walker & The Soul Tribe, The Jazzistics, Suntouch, Sound Directions, etc… it goes on like this). Each one has it's own flavor. I think he is going to release a "solo album" of each band included. This guy is a dynamo.

Anyway, this CD is bomb, really listenable. Plus the cover artwork is excellent. Highly recommended.