music
oracknows | June 24, 2007I can't argue with this:
An embodiment of the mystery, danger and freedom of the music itself, the crotch has occupied a central role in a stirring rock performance.
Of course, the crotch today remains a valuable weapon in the rock arsenal, as exemplified by the current wave of tight pants bands rehashing the Kinks/The Who sound of the 60s and 70s. More and more women are also mobilizing their crotches as well for the good of the rock. Take Peaches, for example. In recent years, the famed Electroclash chanteuse has turned her crotch into something of a cottage industry for photos, song lyrics…
voltagegate | June 19, 2007It's about damn time. If their first single is any indication, Icky Thump will be less folky than their last release. And I love this line:
Well Americans want nothin' better to do, why don't you kick yourself out ,you're an immigrant too? Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well ya can't be a pimp and a prostitute too.
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2007Here's a translation of one of my first brushes with absurdism, Swedish rocker Eddie Meduza's 70s song "Va den grön så får du en ny" (original lyrics here with ugly popups).
If It Was Green, Then I'll Replace It
By Eddie Meduza
I'd bought myself a vacuum flask
In a store down in Målilla
It was real pretty until I poured coffee into it
But then it broke into pieces
So I called Mr. Chin
He's the man with the store
(You see, he's got a really big chin)
And I told him, my flask is busted
Do they come with a guarantee?
Yeah, said Mr. Chin, gravelly and really slowly
He was speaking really slowly…
aardvarchaeology | June 14, 2007Here's a charming interview with Apples in Stereo front man Robert Schneider, followed by him performing "Energy" from the new album. All courtesy of the Instant Talk Show. (Total clip length 9 minutes.)
mikethemadbiologist | June 13, 2007I'm not the only one bothered by Mudcat Saunders' article about the Metropolitan Opera Wing of the Democratic Party; maha is too. That post is worth a read, but at the end of the post she makes a very good point about preserving culture (italics mine):
Mudcat has slandered opera fans by implying they are elitist snobs. The fiercest opera fans I have ever met have been regular working-class folks -- construction workers, plumbers, clerks. I used to know a lady who worked the counter in a Paramus, New Jersey, department store and who saw every production at the Met. It was her religion. She…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2007I am almost completely unable to enjoy Chinese pop music. In fact, I can barely stand listening to it: I find it saccharine-yet-bland and silly and clichéd. But there's one aspect of it that's kind of fun, though I can only appreciate it with the help of an interpreter. Chinese musicians record cover versions of a lot of Western pop hits, and the lyrics they write are amazing. When compared to the originals, that is.
Here are snippets of two late-70s song lyrics, translated by my wife from Chinese to Swedish and by myself from Swedish to English.
The birds are singing and cawing
Telling me to…
voltagegate | June 9, 2007...but you make it so damn hard.
MTV has been incessantly airing their latest movie award travesty all week, and I've caught a couple of segments while channel surfing. Another year, another boring awards ceremony. Even Sarah Silverman's jabs at Hollywood couldn't make up for the mediocrity.
I have a hard time letting go of MTV. I know it's crap - I think everyone does, including the producers - but I still have a lingering hope that things will change. Most of my younger friends from college don't remember when MTV actually was down to Earth, played good music and had some sort integrity…
aardvarchaeology | June 4, 2007Since the last time we checked in with Kurtz back in March, those blackhearted deviants have released nine new songs on their web site. That's more than an LP's worth of original material in less than three months. Their sound has developed through the adoption of Garageband software. Fans of the Sisters, Joy Division and J&MC, get thee there for sordid kicks and ugly memories.
aardvarchaeology | May 26, 2007Marshmallow Coast's 2000 offering Coasting is one of my favourite albums: quirky and cool neopsych with a lot of acoustic guitar and off-key singing. 2002's Ride The Lightning also has some great songs (listen to "Classifieds"!), but their 2003 production Antistar is boring if not downright bad. It was thus with some misgivings that I put on 2006's Say It In Slang. Dear Reader, I usually hate albums the first time I listen to them. But let me tell you that, to my surprise and delight, I found Say It In Slang as good as Coasting if not better. It's a beautiful piece of cool jazzy guitar pop.…
oracknows | May 16, 2007As a fan of Iggy Pop, I was appalled to read this:
Former "The Lord of the Rings" star Elijah Wood will play Iggy Pop in The Passenger, a biopic of the legendary rocker, reports Variety. Ted Hope's This Is That Productions and Traction Media are executive producing.
The movie, which follows Pop's early years with his band the Stooges, will be directed by Nick Gomez (Drowning Mona) from a script by Eric Schmid.
The $6 million-$8 million "Passenger" is set to film in next six months and is scheduled for delivery by midsummer 2008.
Pop has "given his blessing" to the project but will not take…
voltagegate | May 15, 2007I can't wait to see these guys again. Freakin' amazing guitar work and just sloppy enough to avoid pretension. They're touring with the Deftones this summer.
Me and my ex-music editor (*sniffle*), Steph saw them last July at the Ottobar in Baltimore. Tom Erak, the lead singer is a very cool guy. She got to chat with him after the show.
Steph has caught the blogging bug too, and started a punk news blog as an extension of her stuff at TBL. She goes to way more shows than she can cover in the paper, so Typing for Miles provides an outlet for her insatiable, relentless music writing.
goodmath | May 11, 2007
Baka Beyond, "Baka Play Baka": This is what happens when you take a bunch of great trad Irish musicians, and lock them into a room with a bunch of great African musicians from the Baka tribe in Cameroon. I don't know quite how to describe this. It really doesn't sound like anything else. You can tell that there's Irish roots, and you can hear some African things that sound a little bit like M'balah, but mostly, it's something different. Very cool stuff.
Flook, "Beehive": Flook is, bar none, the greatest instrumental trad Irish band around. They've got the guy who I think is greatest…
mikethemadbiologist | May 11, 2007
...and a symphony broke out? Who starts a fight at the Boston Pops? From the Globe:
One of the two concertgoers at the center of what has become known as "The Brawl at Symphony Hall" said yesterday that he intends to press charges against the man who punched him after being asked several times to stop talking during the Boston Pops' opening night gala.
"People with a temper like that aren't really safe in society," Matthew Ellinger , a 27-year-old graphic designer from Brighton, said yesterday. "If a guy is going to lose his temper at the symphony when somebody asks him to stop talking,…
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2007Say "Swedish psychedelic rock" to a musically inclined foreigner, and chances are they'll think of The Soundtrack of Our Lives, an excellent stonesy outfit from Gothenburg. But in New York, a few people who shop at Other Music may think of Dungen instead.
Dungen ("the Grove") combine psychedelic 70s prog rock with Swedish ethno, fiddle and flute. They just released their third album, Tio Bitar ("Ten Pieces/Songs"), and I've listened it through a few times.
In the age of the mp3 file, albums are once again less important than songs. (In fact, the word "album" originally referred to a physical…
aardvarchaeology | May 6, 2007I'm a big fan of Pandora.com, a smart on-line radio station. It first asks you to name a number of songs, albums and artists that you like -- you can actually start with a single song. Then it figures out (with the aid of a huge database where music has been classified in detail according to a large number of parameters) what other stuff you might like -- and plays it to you. As you rate the songs it throws at you, it gets a better and better idea of what to give you next.
But us Swedes are out of luck now. Because of a huge and sudden increase in the licencing rates Pandora has to pay, they'…
goodmath | May 4, 2007
Rachel's, "Even/Odd": Rachel's is a very classically-oriented post-rock
ensemble - violin, bass, woodwinds. They're absolutely brilliant. "Even/Odd" is a short, extremely rhythmic track with an interesting pulse with an almost siren-like string lead played over it. Very, very cool.
Rush, "Spindrift": Rush is back! They released a new album this week. It's a
much better work than their last effort (which wasn't bad, mind you, but it wasn't as
as good as it could have been). It actually sounds a lot more like older Rush than
most of their other recent work. Really good. Not…
purepedantry | May 3, 2007Just to show that I have way too much time on my hands, I went last night and collected the best science themed music videos that I could find on YouTube. Feel free to suggest more if I missed some.
1) Weird Science by Oingo Boingo...classic...so classic...
I don't think I had ever seen this video; I've seen the movie, just not the video. Seems like they filmed it in some strange sweat shop with huge rotating gears pushed by women with feathered hair -- all very scientific. In fact, my lab looks exactly like that. And don't forget the mannequins. No science can be conducted without…
oracknows | April 28, 2007Students cheat on exams. There's just no getting around it. No matter how secure teachers think they've made their examination processes, there will always be a subset of students who try to find a way around any security procedures and give themselves an advantage, either by hook or by crook. These days, technology is making it even harder to prevent such cheating:
Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
"It doesn't take long to get out of the loop…
goodmath | April 20, 2007 The shuffle generated interesting results this week.
Apothecary Hymns, "The Marigold". Apothecary Hymns sounding extremely Tull-like. Good stuff.
Mogwai, "Katrien". Mogwai is simply brilliant: one of the greatest post-rock groups out there. I keep getting more of their stuff, and I haven't heard a single bit that I didn't absolutely love. This one starts off nice and mellow, and builds into some more intense fuzz, and then settles back again. Overall, it's got a mostly relaxed mood to it. Typical Mogwai - aka fantastic.
Marillion, "Thankyou Whoever you Are". A very uninspired track from…
omnibrain | April 19, 2007Usually we feature visual illusions since they seem to be the easiest to make and of course nearly a third to a half of our brain is dedicated to vision so we may just be more interested. In any case here are three auditory illusions from Mighty Optical Illusions.
Shepard's ascending tones (MP3) - This is a recording of Shepard's paradox synthesized by Jean-Claude Risset. Pairs of chords sound as if they are advancing up the scale, but in fact the starting pair of chords is the same as the finishing pair. If you loop this sample seamlessly then it should be impossible to tell where the…