2006 March archive at Candied Pop

Archive for March, 2006

Fuzzy Headed Listening

Published by James March 24th, 2006 in Random. 0 Comments

Today is one of those days where my listening habits are more random than usual and I cannot bring myself to think critically or focus for very long on any one thing; days like this I just tap into my collection and play it on shuffle. Some of the highlights are:

“Traneing In” from Coltrane’s set Live Trane: The European Tours (disc four) where he is just raw, tossing the melody around like he is wrestling it for his life.
Gorillaz’s “Dirty Harry” off Demon Days struck a chord with it dirty bounce and since I’m really not much of a fan of their work it surprised me that I found a hitch in my step as it played.
“A Gathering Storm” by Terry Hall & Mushtaq hypnotized me with the blend of musical traditions from the Middle East, Eastern Europe with a healthy dose of Dub tossed in; The Hour of Two Lights is an amazing album.
Alif Tree has been in pretty hard rotation the last couple of days and “Belle” off French Cuisine catches me every time with its lovely reworking of traditional jazz arrangements.
The minimalist techno on The Keyprocessor And TV-99-AD’s “Go - TV-99-AD,” from Assembled 014/015, smoothed off the rough edges to an otherwise hectic morning.

Good day to just float around on pillows of sound.

The Returnables - S/T

Published by Scott March 23rd, 2006 in Free Tracks, Album, Review and 2006. 0 Comments

Another new Dirtnap release! Kind of a hodgepodge EP with four studio tracks and three live ones, all leftovers from last year. These guys first got together playing Undertones covers so 70’s punk is their primary frame of reference. Some power pop influence too. The studio recordings are strong but things really blast off with the live songs. “End of the World” is a brisk, scrappy party anthem, “Last to Know” mines a vein of Velvet Underground, and “Dare” closes things out in revved up, bittersweet fashion. Sounds like they must have put on a pretty good show.

It was only after listening a couple of times that I found out the bummer circumstances surrounding this Chicago band. I knew they had broken up but didn’t know it was because their guitarist, John Glick, had been killed in a car wreck last summer. Seems a young suicidal woman slammed into the car he was stopped in while at an intersection. I remember hearing about the accident because Silkworm drummer Michael Dahlquist and Doug Meis of The Dials were also killed.

Well the only possible good news to come from the incident is that The Returnables left behind some sonic documents for us to enjoy. There are three tracks at Myspace to sample. The download buttons are activated but unfortunately the links are broken. You can grab “What Would Mother Say?” from their new release at the Dirtnap site. And of course the whole thing is available at eMusic. I should also mention that proceeds of The Returnables go to the John Glick Memorial Fund.

PLOrk - Princeton Laptop Orchestra

Published by James March 23rd, 2006 in Free Tracks, Album and 2006. 1 Comment

PLOrk Debut Trawling the Internet can often dredge up some truly fascinating things, in this case a Wired article pointed me in the direction of PLOrk, “15 first-year students on Macs connected to custom omnidirectional speakers can emulate a full-fledged philharmonic. Or an electronica band. Or a jazz combo.” That hooked me.

Immediately, I was filled with visions of young students hunched over notebooks furiously left and right clicking creating a sweaty grind not unlike Kosmic Kommando’s Laptop Dancing. Reality, however, is a little different. The first PLOrk concert opens with the charming ABC song where each performer recorded themselves reciting each letter of the alphabet and then assigned it to the corresponding key on the keyboard. From there, the concert touches upon ambient drones, somewhat abstract work reminiscent of Illbient, and even gamelan. While performances like this have been happening for decades, such as the more recent Chip Music movement, it shows that the establishment is beginning to accept electronic music as a viable form of expression rather than being a sandbox for theories.

I found the concert to be fun and thought provoking and would definitely recommend you give it a listen. The concert can be downloaded in its entirety at their website. Part of me wishes that I was fourteen years younger and wealthy enough to attend a school like Princeton because I would be dying to be a part of this ensemble, alas I’ll have to settle for being firmly entrenched in my thirties and too poor for a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Century of Aeroplanes - Travel In Any Direction

Published by James March 22nd, 2006 in Free Tracks, Album, Review and 2006. 0 Comments

It is interesting to note that Travel In Any Direction comes with the caveat that “The Century of Aeroplanes does not have any techno drumbeats.” Even being the House head that I am a cursory glance at the song titles and artwork did not lead me to believe that this album would be brimming with block rocking beats. In fact this album is filled pastoral soundscapes the lull and soothe and would be best as classified as ambient.

The Century of Aeroplanes blends layered instrumentation in languid passages that impart a somnolescent feeling. At times, it can appear to be contrived as if the were contracted to the Winston Hill label but for the most part their work is deeply relaxing, meditative, and nuanced often resembling the works of Robert Rich or Thom Brennan with occasional glimpses of the Americana influenced arrangements of Peace Harbor. The confessional song titles further the mystic with enigmas like “I had the pear dream again” and “These things take time (to talk)”.

With the whole album available as a free download it is worth a try, especially if you occasionally partake in the soft delights of ambient music.

Pandora

Published by Scott March 20th, 2006 in Meta-Chatter. 3 Comments

A friend just turned me on to Pandora, a nifty free “music discovery service” that streams songs based on your preferences. How it works is you enter an artist as a starting point. If Pandora has the rights to them, your new “radio station” will play one of their songs. After that it tries to play songs by artists that have similar qualities based on the profiles in the Music Genome Project’s extensive database. For every track played, you can click on the album art and choose thumbs up, “I like it,” or thumbs down, “I don’t like it.” If you choose the latter the song cuts off and a new one starts. In this way Pandora tailors a play list to what you like. And it’ll probably be sooner rather than later that an aritst you’ve never heard of crops up.

It’s kind of funny because for any given track you can click on, “Why did you play this song?” and it will give you an explanation. For example, on Neu!’s “Negativland” it says, “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features electric rock instrumentation, electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, and extended vamping.” Who knew?

I’ve seen that “extended vamping” comment quite a few times and admit I had no idea what it meant until I looked it up. The FAQ says,

‘Vamping’ is a term that refers to extended improvisation over a repeated chord change. One of the quintessetial examples of vamping is the outro to Freebird by Lynrd Skynrd, featuring a 5-minute epic guitar solo over some repeated chords.

So there I learned a new descriptive term. Maybe I’ll work it into a review sometime and make it sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Apparently Pandora is only supposed to be available to U.S. citizens because of licensing restrictions. You are required to enter a zip code when you sign up for an account. If you live in another country and want to try it, I don’t see what harm there’d be in saying that you live Georgia and your zip code is 30016…

If you do sign up, please leave your radio station address in the comments section or email it to us so we can check it out. If you’d like, you can give mine a listen too: X-Ray Dash Radio.

Milosh - Meme

Published by James March 20th, 2006 in Album, Review and 2006. 0 Comments

Geek Soul. If that was a legitimate category it is where I would place Meme. This is music to which I might unwind after a particularly harrowing Rails installation or when I am sorting polyhedral dice. The soothing blend of jittery IDM rhythms, ethereal vocals, and long bell like synth pads are similar to the more peaceful work of Aphex Twin and Mu-Ziq with textural elements that impart a Boards of Canada like feeling. It is music for overly active minds seeking to be at rest.

Meme is a beautiful album with quiet vocals colored by traces sorrow and regret. The opening track “It’s Over” slides the listener into this frame of mind as he sings about the difficulty of watching everything slip away. In opposition to the lyrics the songs maintains a good pace with the crackle of drums in the distance and clear firm bell tones hammering out the melody. the song is very much New Wave for the sophisticate that has grown up in the Internet era. This gives way to later tracks which are more firmly rooted in IDM and ambient, such as “Instrumental” which sees Milosh heavily manipulating tones to create increasingly complex rhythmic passages all while anchoring it with more traditional means.

Milosh’s work is highly layered and textured with song structures and tonalities being worked over enough times that the sound becomes smooth, blended, and faded at times. This is by no means a drawback as the nuances of the album can be enjoyed when the listener disengages from actively listening and instead rides each piece from start to finish. However, the drawback to this is the tendency for songs to blur into one another and one can lose track of where they are on the album.

I certainly enjoyed this album and will definitely recommend it to people looking for something of a more relaxed approach or anyone who tags themselves as a geek like myself. You can sample some of the songs on his page at Download.com or you can just grab the album from eMusic or Amazon.

Centro-Matic - Fort Recovery

Published by Scott March 19th, 2006 in Free Tracks, Album, Review and 2006. 1 Comment

Let’s get right to it: Fort Recovery is outstanding. Sure, it’s a bit early to be talking album of the year but this one will stay at the top of my personal heap unless something even more amazing comes along to take it’s place. I’ve had it in ultra heavy rotation since picking it up a couple of weeks ago and its stature continues to grow. Like my obsessions last year with albums by Sufjan Stevens (admittedly months after everyone else), Bright Eyes, and Art Brut, Centro-Matic’s latest is my recommended daily dose of listening.

It’s hard to say what sets Fort Recovery apart from other the band’s other fine works. An unrepentant rockist, I’m probably more partial to this one because there are only a couple of the singer-songwriter type songs that usually have a greater presence on their albums. Not that I don’t enjoy such songs from Will Johnson. In fact it’s the lyrics from one of these that are the most provocative and affecting on the album. “The more I learn about the world / The less that I find I’m afraid to die,” he sings on “I See Through You.” It’s a powerful sentiment, all the more so delivered with Johnson’s careworn expressiveness and set to acoustic guitar, mellow keyboards, and melancholy strings.

Most of the time though, Fort Recovery finds Centro-matic at their most exuberant. Johnson leads the way with his fantastic voice, a throaty baritone on the velvety side of whiskey soaked. Backing him is incredibly warm sounding fuzzed out rock. Even with occasional squeals of feedback and some truly meaty rawk grooves, they manage to produce a sound that’s neither abrasive nor slick. It’s more of an organic resonance that transcends its electric, amplified origins.

It’s an album filled with highlights so I’ll only tell you about a couple of my favorites. They’re not much of a riff rock band but with huge pounding drums and downtuned guitars they work up a killer one for “Calling Thermatico.” It’ll have you reaching for the volume to crank it up a couple of notches. There’s a wicked keyboard hook on “The Fugitives Have Won” that’s as novel in context as it is memorable. Johnson’s gravelly voice on that song absolutely floors me as it matches the guitars’ dirty fuzz.

Just to reiterate, Fort Recovery is an album you should not miss. I wrote before about where you can find “Triggers and Trashheaps” to sample. Centro-matic also has a Myspace where you can stream that song along with the aforementioned “Calling Thermatico.” Or you can (and should) download the whole thing from eMusic.

Search

Abstract Africa Alt Country Athens Austin Best of 2006 Best of 2007 Billy Childish Brit pop Brooklyn Concerts Country Disco DIY Dub Electronic Elephant Six Excuses Experimental Folk free MP3 Funk Garage Groove Halloween Hip Hop Holly Golightly House indie Indie Pop Indie rock Instrumental Jazz Kid Stuff Lame List Making Listening Live live music Lo Fi lyrics minimal Music New Music New York NPR Pop Post Punk Post Rock Power Pop Psych Psychedelic R&B Rhythm Rock San Francisco saturday playlist Soul Texas World

About

You are currently browsing the Candied Pop weblog archives for the month March, 2006.

Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.