Why People Listen To Music

"The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness."
-Robert Levine

Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction Music Video

Top Five Albums of 2007

Artist: The Sword
Album: Age of Winters
Genre: Doom Metal
Sounds like: A bunch of bison being pushed over a cliff
For most, heavy metal is not music. I can agree on some fronts, especially with song titles like: "Lament for the Aurochs" and lyrics that sound like a hilariously drunken attempt to recount a night playing Dungeons and Dragons: "Bane of the demon lord/Slayer of the spider-priests/Spiller of the silver blood!"
Yet apart from all the Norse-viking mythology, this is the most engaging hard rock album in ages - guaranteed to get your head bobbing and heart pumping. Part Black Sabbath, part Lynard Skynyrd, and part Led Zeppelin - the riffs are heavy(two guitars tuned down to drop C) and will restore your faith in rock music.


Artist: Radiohead
Album: In Rainbows
Genre: Experimental Rock
Sounds like: OK Computer, yet much more lush and sparse
This is Radiohead's most accessible album. It is also their most quiet and yet it's still classic Radiohead: easy-going but tense, comfortable and anxious, fatalistic and hopeful. Tom York remains one of the most gifted song writers of his generation: "I'm an animal trapped in your hot car," from "All I Need," has to be one of the saddest, most open-hearted metaphors used to express unrequited love.


Artist: Burial
Album: Untrue
Genre: Dubstep
Sounds like: A long walk by yourself, in the middle of the night
Created by an anonymous producer from London, no other album this year conveys such loneliness(ok, so In Rainbows comes close) through the raw atmosphere it creates. This album is full of beats, bass and voices that reinforce the music's sense of persistence and alienation. Nowhere does it cross over into mainstream electronica nor are there any stylistic variations, just solid dubstep taking center stage.

Artist: Iron and Wine
Album: The Sheperd's Dog
Genre: Indie Rock
Sounds like: Warm, Lush, Autumnal, Reflective, Melancholy, Intimate, Bittersweet
No more does Sam Beam sound like a musician who records his albums in a small closet. His distinctive whisper falsetto is all but gone and instead we are treated to banjos, bongos, pianos, guitars, and tambourines - making Iron and Wine sound almost like a full band. This is masterful songcraft and a note-perfect production.



Artist: Saul Williams
Album: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
Genre: Poetry/Political Rap
Sounds like: Public Enemy collaborating with Nine Inch Nails
Saul William's isn't an MC, he's a straight-up poet. Teaming up with Trent Reznor, these songs are a one-way street littered with industrial, punch-in-your-face story telling. Layer after layer of meaning, Niggy Tardust goes further than most hip-hop albums. It hits you harder as well. Oh, and the entire album can be downloaded for $5.

Honorable Mentions:
Arcade Fire Neon Bible
Echospace The Coldest Season
Feist The Reminder
M.I.A. Kala
Nine Inch Nails Year Zero
Panda Bear Person Pitch
Rilo Kiley Under the Blacklight
Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The White Stripes Icky Thump

Hip-Hop Statistics

In an ever changing world of social vernacular, one is often perplexed with understanding hip-hop lyrics. I've come across an amazing set of graphs and pie charts that are quite educational. For example, the above bubble chart helps one comprehend the fact that bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks.

World's Largest Subwoofer?

A few years ago, Royal Device, a self-proclaimed esoteric audio/video company built: "The Biggest SUBWOOFER of the WORLD, for the most esoteric Audio and AUDIO-VIDEO Room of the World. The Highest efficiency ever obtained with NO distortion using NO feedback tube low power amplifiers and NO crossover on the speakers"

The subwoofer has dual 9.5 meter horns driven by eight 18" drivers each. Yes, that's right, eight 18" drivers in each horn for a total of 16 woofers. It has a claimed frequency response of 10Hz at full power - below the level of human hearing. With an efficiency of more than 110 dB at 1W/1meter the system operates at 6400 Wrms total.

The subwoofer horns are built underneath a solid concrete floor, one meter deep.

The acoustic level at listening position(about 6 meters from frontal speakers) are 100 dB with 1 Watt.

Damn.

Fall Music

Looking for some good fall/wintry music to get you through the shorter days? Forget all the new Pop music coming out - fall is a darker time; the cold slowly approaches and the once familiar landscape begins to take on a skeletal appearance. Yeah! Nothing is more perfect than Morton Feldman's meditation, Rothka Chapel. Best described as minimal choral music, its worth checking out and best listened to alone with headphones on. I advise downloading track one, titled Rothka Chapel 1 from either iTunes or Amazon.


Not quite in the pensive mood for Feldman? Then check out Yagya, a minimal techno producer from Iceland. Don't let the album cover throw you off - this album is anything but the sharp, cold feelings the art suggests. This album is soft, sweet and full of great rhythmic beats. Rhythm of Snow is perfect for long cold nights. This album remains one of my all time favorite ambient albums as it conjures all the good feelings associate with snow(laying in a thick down comforter while watching snow fall peacefully outside) rather than the bad ones(frostbitten toes). Check out track eight, appropriately titled "Snowflake 8".

Fabric 36 - Ricardo Villalobos

The 36th volume for the popular Fabric mix series is by Ricardo Villalobos. It's a bit unique in that every track is produced by him and then mixed into an album. Similar to Richie Hawtin's minimal DE9 and Transitions, this album is sparse, multi-layered and takes quite a bit of patience. The Chilean/German DJ had a few interesting comments to say about his influences and love for percussion:

“I started to play conga and bongos; I was listening to percussive and South American music at the time. In a way, the electronic music we listen to when we dance is very similar to African and South American percussion music. On one hand, you have the percussion, like Samba, where people are dancing for hours and days – it’s the same rules and ideas behind techno: to make people go crazy, lose their realities, let go. This is happening with percussive music. It was a clear path, or it was a normal consequence, to go from acoustic percussive music to electronic percussive music. All my knowledge I have about percussion, I put into electronic music of course. When I was a kid, I was very often in situations with percussion sessions, for hours, the whole night. My parents had friends that owned concert agencies so we heard so many Southern American musicians and sessions. I was just a little kid, always looking on and recognising something that was making people dance. This has always really fascinated me. As a musician, you are searching for that your whole life. I’m constantly on a search for the truth about the dance floor - why do people dance, what’s the secret behind it.” – Ricardo Villalobos

There Will Be...Strings?

Jonny Greenwood composed the score for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film There Will Be Blood. Based on Upton's Sinclair novel Oil!, this is a story about family, greed, religion and of course, oil.

Jonny is most commonly known as the guitarist for Radiohead and it seems odd he'd compose an entire film score, especially for a major Hollywood movie. However, he's no neophyte to orchestration as he's done the score for a documentary called Bodysong as well as being commissioned by the BBC to compose a piece call "Popcorn Superheart Receiver".

There Will Be Blood is a brutal, inspiring movie as well as the year's best so far. Jonny's score keeps the film's tone as an abrasive and in-your-face melody, the kind that demands to be heard. Sound is 50% of a movie and you'll no doubt pay attention to the music - whether you like it or not. There will be strings, lots and lots of very loud strings that create a foreboding, haunting presence from beginning to end.

When interviewed together for EW about the score, they replied:

JONNY GREENWOOD: Sometimes Paul would describe the thing as kind of close to the horror-film genre. And we talked about how The Shining had lots of Penderecki and stuff in it. So yeah. I think it was about not necessarily just making period music, which very traditionally you would do. But because they were traditional orchestral sounds, I suppose that's what we hoped was a little unsettling, even though you know all the sounds you're hearing are coming from very old technology. You can just do things with the classical orchestra that do unsettle you, that are sort of slightly wrong, that have some kind of undercurrent that's slightly sinister. Which is what's happening with this film sometimes. Part of what I picked up on and got excited about is that it's the end of the 19th Century. A lot of [things are] just implied, so it's not a horror film in that sense, because people are sort of being polite, but there's a sense of darkness going on at the same time. I love that kind of stuff, when things are unspoken.

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: I guess when you have a title like that, the music better be a little bit scary.

Gimme some FLAC!

FLAC is a file format for audio compression. Since it is a lossless audio format, it doesn't remove information from the audio data stream and diminish the sound like all MP3s do. FLAC is the closest you can come to CD quality and is the format of choice for those wishing to preserve their audio collections. It can handle PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample and go as far down as 1Hz(oh yeah) to 1,048,570Hz with up to eight unique channels. Stereo or 7.1 surround sound if you'd like.

So why don't more people use FLAC files instead of MP3s? Well don't expect FLAC to play easily in mainstream players like iTunes or Windows Media Player. The format itself is DRM free, unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation and even includes an API. Sounds a lot like Linux, eh?

With the rise of digital music downloads, the increase in personal storage space and the demand for better audio...expect to see more FLAC in the near future.

Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Collaboration

Trent Reznor produced the latest Saul Williams album which is due for release later tonight. Saul Williams, a spoken-word and hip-hop artist will no doubt gain attention as the sound of this record spans many genres: think NIN meets Gnarls Barkley meets Deep Dish. Interestingly enough, you can download his entire album for free, or chip in $5 to support Saul.

A recent interview by New York Magazine have Saul and Trent discussing this release, their feelings towards major record labels and their praise for OiNK:

How did this collaboration come about?
Trent: I'd come across Saul through his "List of Demands" video, and it really impressed me as strong piece of work, as an aggressive rock-type track that jumped out of the television. So I checked to see if he was interested in touring with me. And it impressed me that he could go in front of an audience that probably didn't know who he was. He won the crowd over, and I watched it happen every night. I said, "Hey, if you ever want to experiment on some tracks, let's see what happens."

How would you characterize the music?
Saul: Gosh, I don't know, ghetto gothic? I guess I'd characterize it as hard-core dance. I don't know if I'd include spoken word in it, actually. It's so danceable. I have a lot to say, but I wanted to find a way to say it that didn't get in the way of me dancing my ass off.

Did you ever butt heads?
Trent: There were times when we disagreed on things, certainly, but sooner or later he'd realize that I was right. [They both laugh.]

What inspired you to go the In Rainbows route with this album?
Saul: From the start, I remember Trent saying, "Let's give it away for free." At first, I was like, "This dude is out of his mind!" But then it really started making sense, and, of course, with Radiohead doing it, we were like, "What the fuck? The idea that we had was great, and we should really follow it through."

Trent: I think it's just an awkward time right now to be a musician. The reality is that people think it's okay to steal music. There's a whole generation of people, that's all they've known. I used to buy vinyl. Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks — if not two months — before it comes out. There's no real way around that. I'm truly saddened because I think music has been devalued, so that it's just a file on your computer, and it's usually free. But we can't change that. What we can do is try to offer people the best experience that we can provide them. Will it work? I don't know. But I think it's a great way to get music out to people who are interested. At the end of the day, all I care about is the integrity of the music, and that the feeling of those who experience it is as untainted as possible. I'd rather it not be on an iPod commercial. I'd rather it not be a ringtone that you have to get with a free cell phone or any of that bullshit.

Are you using this project, Trent, to test the waters for a self-released NIN record?
Trent: There isn't a Nine Inch Nails record done. I'm starting one right now. If I had one that was done, I would [release] it today in exactly the same way. I won't have one done for several months. One of the things that started this in motion with Saul was me sitting around thinking about finally getting off a major label, which I think is the right move for Nine Inch Nails. I wasn't looking to jump right back into another binding contract with a big company, and I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't advising Saul to do that in today's climate. We decided to go the route we did, and we'll see what happens.

How long do you think before the labels are out of business?
Trent: I mean, who knows? I remember a time when it felt like, being on a major label, our interests were aligned. At times, it's a pretty well-oiled machine and the luxury is that I feel like I've got a team of people who are taking care of the shit I don't want to think about. I don't care about the radio guy, I just want to make music. But those days are gone. Because, mainly, that infrastructure is broken at the moment. How long before [record companies] are irrelevant? Who knows? They seem to be doing everything they can to make sure that happens as quickly as possible.

Saul: I had already had experiences with my first album, with Rick Rubin and Sony and everything, where the company basically sat on it for two years and told me it wasn't hip-hop. So, I was also very familiar with the infrastructure, and this just made the most sense.

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?
Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

How much did you guys pay for the new Radiohead album?
Saul: I paid $7, which is like, what, fourteen pounds? No, wait, that's like three pounds!

Trent: I bought the physical one, so I spent a whopping $80. [Pauses.] But, then I re-bought it and paid $5,000, because I really felt that I need to support the arts, so people could follow in my footsteps. [Saul laughs.]