Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Roland TR-808

"But I know ya'll wanted that 808 can you feel the B-A-S-S bass" sings Andre 3000 from Outkast. What, ask you, is an 808?

Well it's not an area code, but one of the first programmable drum machines. Introduced by Roland in 1980, this device was meant for musicians to create drum beats in the studio without forcing a drummer to pick up his sticks. The sound of this device became very distinct, in part due to its kick drum sound, which could produce very deep sub-bass.

The group 808 State named itself after this classic little wonder. Additionally, Kaney West's fourth studio album is entitled 808s & Heartbreak. Kanye insisted that every track use TR-808 generated drum beats for a more 'tribal drum' sound.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Top 5 Albums of 2008



Artist: TV On The Radio
Album: Dear Science
Genre: Indie Rock
Sounds like: America in 2008
These Brooklynites greeted our historical year with awe and responded with some art-rock party music. Call it the audacity of hope. Producer-guitarist Dave Sitek streamlined and deepened the band's fusion of doo-wop, punk and soul; there are swooning ballads, wind-whipped funk and even a Tom Petty bite. Be sure to listen closely though, there's a lot going on here that only reveals itself with time.


Artist: Lil Wayne
Album: Tha Carter III
Genre: Southern Rap
Sounds like: The best rap album of 2008. Period.
"Next time you mention Pac, Biggie or Jay-Z/Don't forget Weezy Baby," croaks Lil Wayne. This is just one of Lil Wayne's punchlines that hit the mark, however his greatness lies not just in what he says, but in how he says it. I don't know how this weed smoking troll-of-a-man does it, but he's a virtuoso of variations in mood and meter, tone and timbre that mark him, as much as any singer, as one of 21st-century pop's great vocal stylists. Oh and most importantly; don't forget to pack your subwoofer.


Artist: Metallica
Album: Death Magnetic
Genre: Thrash Metal
Sounds like: Agression and escalataion
Critics have called this Kirk Hammet's revenge and I can't agree more. The guitars are back in full force - monsterous riffs, chuga-chuga palm mutting and wah-wah infused solos. They may be old timers, but they've proven they can still rock in vitally violent way. Metallica finally sounds like Metallica again.



Artist: Portishead
Album: Third
Genre: Alternative Rock/Trip-Hop
Sounds like: A mysterious psychedelic rock album
11 years in the making, this is the most effective and all the while challenging music you will listen to this year. AllMusic went on to say: "It demands attention, requiring effort on the part of the listener, as this defies any conventions on what constitutes art pop apart from one key tenet, one that is often attempted yet rarely achieved: it offers music that is genuinely, startlingly original."


Artist: B.B. King
Album: One Kind Favor
Genre: Electric Blues
Sounds like: B.B. King outside his comfort zone
One Kind Favor is a celebration of life with all of its ups and downs, filled with heartbreak but also great joy, which is precisely what B.B. King's best music has always been. His style and tone has changed though, the most radical since the success of The Thrill Is Gone back in 1970. At 83 years old, this singer-guitarist proves once more why he remains one of America's living legends.

Honorable Mentions:
Dido Safe Trip Home
Girl Talk Feed The Animals
Kings of Leon Only By The Night
Nine Inch Nails The Slip
Santogold Santogold
Taylor Swift Fearless
Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Dido - Safe Trip Home

Providing the hook for Eminem's murder ballad "Stan" is an odd way for this English singer to launch her career. But this former Faithless frontwoman and writer for Britney Spears has always harbored a dark side. This third album expands her relaxed wine-bar sound with even deeper shadows.

There are melancholic edges to these tracks, but it's not haunting - it's comforting, reassuring music that's quietly groovy; music that Dido hinted at before but never quite made. The last two tracks, "Burnin Love" and "Northern Skies" seep into each other just perfectly and are an appropriate, powerful way to bring closure.

Monday, November 24, 2008

My Top 5 Nickelback Songs

In order of how long I can stand listening before changing the radio station:

5. Never made it as a wise ma...

4. Prison gates wo...

3. From undernea...

2. Look at...

1. I...

Friday, October 24, 2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

A Jack Johnson Christmas

Brushfire Records home of Jack Johnson, Mason Jennings, Matt Costa, G. Love, Rogue Wave and others — will soon release This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 1, a mix of Christmas songs performed by their family of artists.

Can Indie Rock do Christmas justice? I hope so. Jack Johnson will sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Someday at Christmas". Their is also a Mason Jennings' rendition of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" that should be...interesting.

From Brushfire: "This is something we've been talking about for a while. It was a little difficult to get everyone in the Christmas spirit to record these songs during the summer, but we pulled it off." Elsewhere on the disc, Matt Costa does "All I Want for Christmas" and G. Love debuts "Christmas Baby."

The collection will also feature the first ever official track by Malaysian singer Zee Avi, who is the first woman to be added to the Brushfire roster. Patrick Keeler (drummer from the Raconterus) really likes her and claims she's a cross between Norah Jones and Billie Holliday. Check out a clip of Avi here. ­

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Death Magnetic can now be listened to in it's entirety. All for free. With this release comes a well written review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine:

Call Death Magnetic Kirk Hammett’s revenge. Famously browbeaten into accepting Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock’s dictum that guitar solos were “dated” and thereby verboten for 2003’s St. Anger — a fraught recording chronicled on the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster — Metallica’s lead guitarist dominates this 2008 sequel, playing with a euphoric fury not heard in years, if not decades. This aesthetic shift isn’t because Hammett suddenly rules the band: powerless to add solos to St. Anger, he couldn’t reinstate them without the blessing of Ulrich and James Hetfield, the politburo of Metallica. The duo suffered some combination of shame and humility in the wake of the muddled St. Anger and Monster, convincing these two unmovable forces to change direction. They ditched longtime producer Rock — who helmed every album since 1991’s breakthrough blockbuster Metallica — in favor of Rick Rubin, patron saint of all veteran rockers looking to reconnect with their early spark. Rubin may be the go-to producer for wayward superstars, but as the producer of Slayer, he’s also rooted in thrash, so he understands the core of Metallica’s greatness and gently steers them back to basics on Death Magnetic.

Of course, Metallica’s basics are pretty complex: intertwined guitar riffs, frenetic solos and thunderous double-bass drums, stitched together as intricate seven-minute suites. Metallica slowly weaned themselves away from labyrinthine metal during the ’90s, tempering their intensity, straightening out riffs, and spending nearly as much time exploring detours as driving the main road, all the while losing sight of their identity. This culminated in the confused St. Anger, a transparent and botched attempt at returning to their roots, crippled by the chaos surrounding the departure of bassist Jason Newsted. With all their problems sorted out in public — including replacing Newsted with Robert Trujillo, who acquiesces to the Metallica custom of being buried far, far in the mix — the group embraces every gnarled, ugly thing they eschewed in the years since Metallica. Death Magnetic bounces the band back to the days before Bob Rock, roughly sounding as if it could come after And Justice for All. Such a deliberate revival of the glory days can be tricky, as it could make a group seem stuck in the past — or, just as badly, they can get essential elements wrong — but Death Magnetic is a resounding success because the band hunker down and embrace their core strengths, recognizing that their greatest asset is that nobody else makes noise the same way as they do.

That’s the pleasure of Death Magnetic: hearing Metallica sound like Metallica again. Individual songs and, especially, Hetfield’s lyrics — less the confessional ballast of St. Anger, more a traditional blend of angst and terror — are secondary to how the band sounds, how they spit, snarl and surge, how they seem alive. Metallica isn’t replicating moves they made in the ’80s, they’re reinvigorated by the spirit of their early years, adding shading they learned in the ’90s, whether it’s the symphonic tension of “The Unforgiven III” or threading curdled blues licks through the thrash. Listening to the band play, it’s hard not to thrill at Metallica’s mastery of aggression and escalation. There is no denying that the band is older and settled, no longer fueled by the hunger and testosterone that made their ’80s albums so gripping, but on Death Magnetic older doesn’t mean less potent. Metallica still is vitally violent and on this terrific album — a de facto comeback, even if they never have really gone away — they’re finally acting like they enjoy being a great rock band.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Music Taste Defines Personality


Fans of classical music and jazz are creative, pop lovers are hardworking and, despite the stereotypes, heavy metal listeners are gentle, creative types who are at ease with themselves.

So says Professor Adrian North of Scotland's Heriot-Watt University who has been studying the links between people's personalities and their choice of music.

"People often define their sense of identity through their musical taste, wearing particular clothes, going to certain pubs, and using certain types of slang," North said.

"It's not surprising that personality should also be related to musical preference."

North claims this is the largest study ever conducted into individuals' musical preference and character; taking survey of over 36,000 people from around the world to rate how much they liked 104 different musical styles before taking a personality test.

"Researchers have been showing for decades that fans of rock and rap are rebellious, and that fans of opera are wealthy and well-educated. But this is the first time that research has shown that personality links to liking for a wide range of musical styles."

His study concludes that jazz and classical music fans are creative with good self-esteem, although the former are much more outgoing whereas the latter are shy.

Country music fans were found to be hardworking and shy; rap fans are outgoing and indie lovers lack self-esteem and are not very gentle.

Those who like soul music can be at ease as his research concluded they are creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease with themselves and have a high self-esteem.

North is still looking for volunteers to take part in his research.


Thursday, August 28, 2008

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How do you categorize music?

It's often asked how one categorizes music. "Guess what, that electronic sounding track you're listening to, well it's actually fall under the 'micro-house' category. Nope not electronic music, not techno but 'micro-house'." Most people brush off statements like this, however it's important to note that this way of classification happens not just in electronic music, but all forms of music.

People appear to agree as what are prototypical songs for musical categories, such as "jazz music", "country music" and "rap music". However, within these categories we all know certain songs or groups that are lesser examples than the prototype: the Beastie Boys aren't really rap, Frank Sinatra is not really jazz, or at least not as much as John Coltrane is.

How do we know this? Why are we able to define music?

One hundred years ago, Philosopher Ludwing Wittgenstein supplied an answer: categorical membership is determined not by a definition, but by family resemblance. Let's use an example then of defining music by definitions. We could say that heavy metal is a musical genre that has (a) distorted electric guitars; (b) power chords; (c) loud drums; (d) sexy lead singers, usually shirtless, dripping sweat as they twirl the microphone stand around the stage and (e) frightening band names like Black Sabbath, Spinal Tap, or The Sword.

Although most heavy metal songs do have distorted electric guitars, so does "Beat It" by Michael Jackson - in fact, Eddie Van Halen(a heavy metal god) plays the guitar solo in that song. Even the Carpenters have a couple songs with distorted guitars, yet no one would call them "heavy metal". Led Zeppelin - the quintessential heavy metal band and the band that spawned the genre - has several songs with no distorted guitars at all("Down by the Seaside", "Going to California", "The Battle for Evermore"). "Stairway to Heaven" has no power chords, yet remains a heavy metal anthem. There are no heavy, loud drums either (or distorted guitars for that matter). Metallica is a heavy metal band, yet I don't think anyone would think the lead singer, James Hetfield, sexy. And band names such as Underworld, Burial, Monolake, and Plastikman sure sound dark and scary, right? Actually, these are all artists who produce music on their computers, with no distorted guitars or singers, just lots and lots of bass for people to dance to.

The point here is that definitions of musical genres are not very useful. We say that something is heavy metal if it resembles heavy metal - a family resemblance. In other words, keep listening.

Monday, July 28, 2008

One Day As A Lion

"It's better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb." Zach de la Rocha(vocalist of Rage Against the Machine) took this quote to heart. His solo project is a stripped down attempt to realize this sentiment in sound. It's not what you might think though. These five songs, clocking in at just over 20 minutes, are an intense racket of sociopolitical noise. There isn't any filler here; it's an aural ignition of a gasoline bomb going off in your ears. If you've been waiting for new Rage Against the Machine, download this EP.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Lost Highway: the opera

Opera composers have turned to just about any source available for their work: ancient mythology, the Bible and other sacred texts, epic poetry, folktales, drama, novels, short stories, history and many have created their own original plots. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that cinema has taken so long to catch on as a source for new operas.

This summary taken from AllMusic:

Lost Highway might seem like an odd choice for adaptation to the operatic stage. By almost any measure, the film would be categorized as a “cult classic,” one of the darkest, most disturbing, and most narratively obscure films by any major director. The subject of endless debate, the film raises questions about reality versus fantasy and offers few certainties about its meaning. It leaves the viewer wondering not only “What was that supposed to mean?,” but “What just happened?” The film involves an affluent, unhappily married California couple, Fred and Renée Madison, who receive a series of increasingly intrusive and creepy videotapes, which someone has taken inside their house while they slept. At a party, Fred meets a Mystery Man, who has the unnerving ability to be two places at once — at the party and inside the Madison’s house — simultaneously. The next day Fred receives a videotape of himself, bloodied, beside Renée’s mutilated body, but he has absolutely no recollection of it. He’s sentenced to death for her murder. One day, the prison guards discover that the man in his cell is not Fred, but a young mechanic named Pete Dayton. Pete has no idea of how he came to be in prison; he’s released, and returns to his job in a garage, but detectives follow his every move. He disastrously falls in love with Alice (a thinly disguised version of Renée), the mistress of his sinister and violent mobster client, Mr. Eddy. To escape Mr. Eddy’s wrath, Alice leads Pete on a murderous crime spree and then abandons him in the desert, where Pete is somehow transformed back into Fred Madison. Fred discovers Alice in a motel room with Mr. Eddy, kidnaps him and takes him into the desert. They fight, and Fred cuts Mr. Eddy’s throat as the Mystery Man looks on, videotaping everything. The movie ends with Fred, pursued by the police, fleeing down the desert highway.

Lynch’s movie is a marvel of visual and thematic leitmotifs that often obscure, rather than clarify meaning or relationships. It’s so packed with barely glimpsed images, mysterious connections, and enigmatic details (that may or may not be significant) that it demands to be seen repeatedly. Lynch has vigorously asserted that the movie can’t (and shouldn’t) be comprehended on a rational level. If it has a logic, it’s an intuitive logic that would lose its essence and mystery if it could be explained. Since music can do its most powerful work on a subconscious level, Lost Highway makes an entirely logical choice for an opera. And based on the resulting piece, it’s clear that Neuwirth was just the composer to make it work. She succeeds because she takes the same approach to the material as Lynch does; her music doesn’t “clarify” the story, or tie plot elements together, but it operates on the same subliminal, non-rational level as the film, enriching it with yet another layer of mystery. Like the film, the music may not make sense to you, but you know that you’ve been punched in the gut.

The film’s soundtrack was written largely by Angelo Badalamenti, one of Lynch’s favorite collaborators, and also includes songs performed by David Bowie, the German industrial metal band, Rammstein, Trent Reznor, Lou Reed, and Barry Adamson. Badalamenti’s ominous soundscapes are the perfect accompaniment to Lynch’s dark imagery, but they are so low key that they rarely draw attention to themselves. The amorphous, subliminal creepiness of his score make it clear that he has absorbed some of the same modernist techniques as Neuwirth. Neuwirth doesn’t mimic the sound of the film, but some moments, like the Badalamenti-esque treatment of Alice’s entrance mentioned above, sound like an homage to the searing cool jazz that’s the hallmark sound of much of Badalamenti’s work for Lynch.

Monday, May 26, 2008

New Weezer

A YouTube video about YouTube videos:

Friday, April 11, 2008

Thursday, April 10, 2008

New Portishead!


It's been 10 years, but Portishead is finally releasing their third album(aptly titled "Third") later this month. Here's a preview of their first single, Machine Gun.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Gods of the Earth

If anything, The Sword has turned up the knob marked “nerd” on its sophomore album Gods of the Earth released today - April fools day.

This isn't a criticism - metal and geek culture continue to cross paths over and over again throughout rock music’s history. It's easy to forget how geeky a lot of the Led Zeppelin songs were - quests of hobbits, dragons, evil forces, etc.

Make no mistake though, Gods of the Earth rocks. Gone is the sludge/stoner/doom/whatever sound of their first album and instead we are treated to a full on thrash assault(think Metallica's Kill 'Em All instead of Black Sabbath's Master of Reality). The riffs are huge, the rhythms are sneaky and brutal, and the pacing is quick. In fact, everything has been turned up, except the vocals, which often get drowned out by the dual guitars.

Song titles include "Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians" and “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, which is by no coincidence the title of a Conan story.

As good as their first album? No, but not much is.

Epic? Of Course.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

For those about to rock...

we salute you. I have no idea what Monotonix is all about, but they sure do rock. All their live shows are done at ground level - within the crowd. I can't wait to see this fiery trio from Tel Aviv.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Binaural Recording

The latest Nine Inch Nails album, "Ghosts I-IV" is a sonic achievement for headphone listening. These 36 tracks are instrumental and most were recorded in a special way: binaurally.

This type of recording uses a simulated head with microphones in the ears. The artist plays the instrument and the recording sounds exactly as what a person would hear in the recording studio. This is a key distinction as studios may be acoustically perfect, however the device(guitar, piano, turntable, etc) is being outputted to a single mic or mixer board. What you get with binaural recording is an amazing 360° degrees of sound, retaining and delivering the space the music was recorded in.

Once recorded, this effect can be reproduced only using headphones. It won't work using loudspeakers, as the acoustics of this arrangement distort the channel separation. Where you stand in the room, the direction of your ears and how close the speakers are all change the sound.

However if you listen through a good set of headphones the result is an awesome listening experience that spatially transcends normally recorded stereo. It accurately reproduces the effect of hearing the exact recorded sound, given the 360° nature of how human ears pick up nuances in sound waves. Binaural recordings can very convincingly reproduce location of sound behind, ahead, above, or wherever else the sound actually came from during recording.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Indie Rock

I discovered a group this week called Beach House. What a lonely, strange pop album this is. Check it out.

MP3: "Gila"

Video: You Came to Me