The Band a Day Project Update

Hello, all. As it stands, I haven’t posted an update in a few days, and I still have active, used accounts on several social networking sites: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress. Yet, I post only occasionally on each of them

Well, I’ve decided to shake things up. Future Band a Day posts will be moved to my Tumblr account, http://tikkimann.tumblr.com as will most of the posts on WordPress–although when I want to write something more complicated than Tumblr will allow, I’ll post it here, and link to it from my Tumblr. I’ll keep my Twitter account roughly the same, because I did some research and it might not be possible to make Twitter posts link to my Tumblr, so I’ll keep my Twitter as a separate place for shorter thoughts, perhaps for blogging when I have my cell phone handy.

I used to use Tumblr for my more casual, offhand posting, reblogging the posts and making the comments that I think everyone should see; I used my WordPress for making more complex statements, taking stands on issues and making comments on what I see in the world. However, I’ve begun to reblog and comment on more serious things on Tumblr as well, making it cover most of the things I want to talk about on a blog. So, I’m going to be moving most of my blogging over to Tumblr at present.

Also, I’m retiring the Band a Day headline, although not the project. In the time that I’ve set up this project, I’ve discovered a number of other interesting artists I’d like to talk about at the time I start listening to them, but it felt odd to do so when I had other this other blog post to make each day. That said, I do plan to cover all of the other artists over time on my  Tumblr, and maybe describe some of the others I’ve been hearing lately as well. But they won’t all be bands (just like they weren’t from the start…mostly just British DJs, it seemed) and they won’t all be daily. I’ll probably break my discussion into 2 parts, since Tumblr can’t seem to make a post with 2 video links in it, and the first video will have the introductory comments in it and the second video will have closing comments as well.

Click over to my Tumblr account now to see my articles on NWA, and perhaps a few other things.

Day 13: Pendulum

Today I listen to Pendulum, a drum and bass group out of Austrailia. Hmm…Wikipedia calls them “An Austrailian/ British Drum and Bass Group“. At least one of them’s British then. Aha! More British DJs! They’re everywhere! They also dabble in other musical genres like metal and dubstep.

Once again, I turn to Grooveshark for some tunes. I listened to a few tracks, and I thought I’d focus on the highlights.

Blood Sugar (nsfw)

I really dig the hilarious intro. To be honest, I think he was right the first time–it sounds like the sonic recreation of the end of the world, just a little bit. It’s in-your-face just like all their other tracks, but with some awesome hooks to back it up.

BONUS:

This lower-quality version of the same track features an amusing discussion in the ‘top comments’ section that I highly recommend tracking back to the original post.

 The Island Part II

This is clearly a good song. It’s very catchy, with pounding, unpredictable beats. I particularly like the thin, high synth noises played at the start and in the, er, chorus. (Not many words in this chorus…)

Overall: I haven’t given Drum and Bass much of a thought before, but after looking it up for these guys, I’m more interested. Like a lot of dubstep, it goes for the huge emotional connection and powerful hooks at the expense of some subtlety and nuance. It’s no surprise to me that electronic genres like Drum N’ Bass get overlooked and dismissed by professional music critics, because, to summarize greatly, this is music that engages the body more than the mind. It’s music you feel, and feel greatly, as opposed to music that you can sit in an easy chair and think deeply about.

And I think I like that. Typical for music arthouse music types, the power of a complex and subtle piece of music draws more favour among critics than something like Pendulum’s work, which aims for maximum impact, every time. However, it’s quite fun to listen to this stuff. I wasn’t grabbed by all of the Pendulum tracks I’ve listened to, but I really did like a few of them. And it got me dancing, which might be the point.

 

Day 12: Bassnectar

Today I listen to Bassnectar, “a freeform electronic musician, DJ, and producer based in Santa Cruz, California . . . best known for his live performances, light shows, and community engagement.” (Wikipedia) Well, at least he’s not as British as all the rest. Once again, I turned to Grooveshark for a selection of his tunes.

Boombox

Loud, in-your-face with heavy beats, this is the kind of music I expect to hear at a crazy DJ party. I thought for a moment that the repeated line “there’s nothing in life that I can’t achieve” didn’t really work with the dominant beat, because it felt like something was taking control, it felt like something was dominating the listener–but I suppose the listener is supposed to identify with the heavy beat, and the line is made to make them think that they can dominate the world too, just like the beat dominates your headphones.

 

LSD

(Note: the version I’m reviewing is here on Grooveshark, second song from the top, I couldn’t find it on Youtube anywhere, the video above is a remix.)

Now that’s funny. I think the world definitely needed an electronic remix of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” called LSD. It just fits! John Lennon always claimed the song was a reference to a drawing his son made, and when John Lennon says “Oh, the song doesn’t mean that thing that makes sense, it’s a reference to this drawing my son made that no one else would get,” I believe him. (An odd man, that one.) That said, how did Bassnectar get clearance to sample the Beatles?! Or is this some unlicensed mixtape-song scenario? Either way, an amusing piece of postmodernism in action.

Timestretch

More in-your-face dubstep-y music. (Some of his stuff doesn’t fit the genre label, but he uses a lot of the same sounds and style.) It’s a catchy hook with a neat balance of light and dark; I had a good time dancing to this when it was on.

Overall: Artists like Bassnectar are the reason why I started this project. Now, I can look up a Bassnectar track when I want to listen to some full-frontal-assault electronic music, or some neat dubstep. That said, this isn’t the sort of thing I’d listen to every day. I tend to prefer catchy, funky electronic sounds to the really aggressive ones used here.

Day 11: Kendrick Lamar

Today I listen to Kendrick Lamar, former Compton resident and current Dr. Dre protégé. I decided to buy a copy of his new album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, an album that people seem to like. I haven’t heard the full album, but I listened to the first few tracks so far.

I had a bit of trouble deciphering the lyrics on first listen so I used Rap Genius to figuire it out; you can find a link to the first song here, and a link to the rest is on the site’s sidebar. 

Sherane AKA Master Splinter’s Daughter

The dark production enveloping a Christian prayer suggests that the album will be the concept album that it, in fact, is. Tells an engrossing story, and the production is lively.

B*tch don’t kill my vibe feat. Lady Gaga

The album version doesn’t feature Lady Gaga because of some dispute with the label, but it’s the original version, and it sounds better in my opinion. More solid production, too. (people have suggested that Dr. Dre has fallen off in recent years, but this stuff is really solid! Good on him, or at least his production team.) A typical rap theme: getting mad at someone who’s keeping you down. Some interesting cadences used for the lines, and a couple of striking lyrics.

Overall: I’ll have to hear the whole album before I can give a consensus, but it seems good so far. The production is really sharp and the writing seems clever as well.

—

Also, I think I’m going to break from a strict schedule for these posts. I haven’t been able to keep it so far, although I think i could if I had a few posts pre-written in advance. I started blogging about this on a whim, but it takes up a substantial amount of time, so I’ll fit it in when I can, aiming for a few posts a week, finishing up no later than the middle of March.

Day 10: DJ Shadow

today I listen to DJ Shadow, yet another famous British DJ. (I’m seeing a trend here.) I’m going to give some songs off of his debut and most well-liked album, Endtroducing….., a listen. The album was made entirely using samples (and some vocals),  isn’t that rad?

Building Steam With a Grain of Salt

It’s a neat beat, the repeating high piano sounds occasionally interrupted by a single piano note from lower in the scale and some nice polyrhythms at around the 3 minute mark.

Number Song

Now there’s a memorable beat drop, right there at the start. The segue into saxophones around the 2-minute mark is also nice. DJ Shadow has an ear for which beats will come together in a catchy, strange fashion.

Overall: I think part of the reason I didn’t post this yesterday is because I didn’t know what I’d say here. The album is very highly regarded, but it didn’t seem all that special to me. I think this album is sort of like the classic science fiction movie Metropolis in that it was important and inspired a lot of the science fiction that came afterward, but as such it contains a lot of the tropes and clichés of what came after, as well. It’s no fault of DJ Shadow or Endtroducing that weird drum loops and so many of the sampling techiniques have become common now–indeed, their spread seems to be partly to the credit of this album. However, after listening to a lot of the DJ material common in the late ’90s and onwards, I’m very familiar with the way this album and others like it sound, and it doesn’t strike me like it might have at the time.

Day 9: Overseer

So, yes, Overseer, a British fellow of DJish descent. There seem to be a number of good british DJs, out there creating more of those block-rocking beats. He does a lot of soundtrack work, and his work appears in a number of films you might–but not certainly–know (The Anamatrix, Snatch). Really, the most public work he’s done was probably on Gran Turismo 3, which sold something like 95 million copies, last I checked. And indeed, he sounds like a lot of soundtracks you know.

Today, I listened to his tunes on Grooveshark, in order listed under the default ‘most popular’ settings. It’s a good system, I think I’ll stick with it. You can find the songs on Grooveshark here: http://grooveshark.com/#!/artist/Overseer/14776

 

Supermoves

Ah yes, this sort of sound was popular in movie soundtracks in the late ’90s/early 2000’s. It’s catchy, and really high-energy. Pretty solid.

 

Skylight

Another catchy tune, with throbbing synth riffs as its centrepiece. Reminds me of “Name of the Game” by The Crystal Method somehow.

 

Horndog

It’s catchy, and somehow it just sounds cool. (For a little while, anyway–some of the repeated vocals around the 1:35 mark in the song are a little weird.) Also, it’s a YTMND in-joke so obscure even I don’t get it, something to do with the user DR-L337. (I do remember at least one site about that person that featured this music, actually…)

Overall: If I was making a soundtrack and this guy was within my budget to soundtrack a film, or to have a song or two used in the scene, I’d definitely try to do that. He’s got some good quasi-instrumental  high-energy tunes. That said, it’s not quite my style, and I don’t think I’m going to seek out more of his material.

 

 

Mid-project update and details (Lol, so official…I have like 9 readers, chill man)

Today I’m going to listen to Overseer, another British DJ that I was recommended. I guess I’ll spoil that part of the project now: about a week before I started this project, I was watching the Youtube video to “Block Rockin Beats” by The Chemical Brothers, and there was a small discussion in the Youtube video’s comments:

Guy: “Where can i find other music similar to this? I really love it.” Guy 2: “if you like this maybe check out the prodigy, massive attack, fatboy slim, justice, moby, simian mobile disco, SBTRKT, daft punk, aphex twin, overseer, dj shadow, bassnectar, pendulum, kraftwerk, noisia, deadmau5. all good electro based bands” Guy 3: “Dude, You just listed almost all my favorite bands.”

It’s stil the top comment, if you go to the video now and press (show the comment) a few times on the top one. Also, LISTEN TO THIS SONG. IT IS GOOD.

AFTER–ahem, sorry. After I read that, I thought that I’d add those bands to my list of bands to listen to. So, I Actually went ahead and tried to create a physical list of bands I liked, and I realized that if I broke this time up, I could get a sense of each artist or band in just a few minutes a day. And it’d be a neat experiment to run on my blog! (The effects of that last sentence negate the time-saved argument in the one before it. I take forever to write these articles, man.)

And so, I started the wholly-original project before you. I’m trying to listen to more songs by an artist now, since I’m not sure I got a good-enough sense of Simian Mobile Disco, for example. Hopefully you enjoy reading about this little experiment, and feel free to discuss it in the comments.

More on Overseer in the next post.

Day 8: Ol Dirty Bastard

Today I’m going to listen to some Ol’ Dirty Bastard (or ODB), a troubled member of the Wu Tang Clan and inventive (read: strange) lyricist. Well, I’m impressed with anyone who can balance artistic success in two massively-successful projects (The Wu Tang Clan and his popular solo work) with prison time, so that’s a start.

“Shimmy Shimmy Ya”

Well, he’s certainly a distinctive musician. I’d like to point out that at 2:42 in the video, he makes the most amusing noise in the video, although not by much. Definitely very ’90s, with the shout-outs to Wu Tang and various Wu Tang subgroups throughout the song (and that’s his solo material!)

Bonus: “Wu Tang is for the children”

To quote the video description, “Ol’ Dirty Bastard storming the stage at the 1998 Grammy’s while Wyclef and Eryka Badu are presenting the award for song of the year after Wu-Tang Clan lost in the category best hip-hop album to Puff Daddy earlier in the evening.” It’s quite funny.You shouldn’t be buying suits for an awards show if you only wanted buy them in the event that you win! That said, I don’t need to tell anyone that the Wu Tang album was probably much better than the Puff Daddy/P Diddy’s album, and I haven’t heard either of them–Diddy just doesn’t have much artistic taste, although he has well-developed commercial ones. Of course, the assertion that “Wu Tang is for the children” is very curious. Wu Tang talk about some pretty serious stuff! Lots of gruesome tales, dark imagery and questions about morality raised–it’s both complex and scarring. Wouldn’t “the children” be the last group of people you’d describe as Wu Tang being for?

Funny, though. The way he praises Diddy while asserting that his music is valuable reminds me a bit of the whole Kanye West-Taylor Swift awards show thing, where Mr. West stormed the stage to tell everyone that Beyonce’s video was the best, even though Taylor’s video won. There, unlike with ODB, West wasn’t even touting his own material, but standing up for a friend’s, and even fewer people (except apparently Kanye) consider the MTV video awards to be a credible artistic institution. (For example, Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video did lose out in one category to Taylor Swift, but the video was also up for an award in an even broader category, one that would presumably be harder to get, and her video won there, because the MTV Video Awards don’t make sense.)

I guess people didn’t really criticize Ol Dirty Bastard for his behaviour here because everyone already recognized him as a bit of an unpredictable oddball character, and the ‘children’ thing just seemed weird. Kanye West already had a reputation as an arrogant jerk, and this incident sent public opinion of him over the edge–people had had enough. I guess that’s fair–he kind of is an arrogant jerk. But he makes some good tunes.

I digress, though. Back to ODB.

“Raw Hide”

Oh ODB, you’re so ridiculous. Just the way he delivers that last monologue at the end here makes him sound a little unhinged. Some of the stuff in here about blood, bodily functions and a desire to kill remind me of a young Eminem. Also similar to Eminem, I notice that when ODB straight-up raps, I find him very easy to understand, which is a good sign, since clearly understanding what’s said is a bit of a problem with me for some rap artists.

Overall: I think I’ll listen to some more. “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” is audaciously weird for a hit single, and “Raw Hide” was messed-up and distinctive. The man seems like he was an interesting character.

The place I plan to start my further listening can be found here: ODB’s debut album, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. I’ll listen to that a bit later, and I’ll leave a link here so you can join in, too. I’m out!

Well, I’ve made note of it on my Twitter, but I’m a little bit behind on the project at present. I hope to get on that soon. in the meantime, here’s another jarring, worthy music video by Aphex Twin. I post this a day later than the other, which is fitting, since both are so, well, jarring individually that they would probably diminish each other if watched together.

And, I guess, the other video I’ve been mentioning. You’d probably just find it anyway:

Day 6: Aphex Twin

Well, I’m a little behind on my posts, but I should be back on track soon. Today I listen to Aphex Twin, a well-regarded electronic musician who rose to prominence in the 90’s. I’ve listened a bit to his album of collected tracks from ’85-92, but I wanted to hear some of the work he’s more famous for.

 

Bonus: Windowlicker (NSFW):

Takes a few minutes to get going, but definitely a music video you won’t forget. Truly bizarre, and sometimes just not OK, but very interesting, if you’ve got the 10 minutes to watch it.

Drukqs (album):

Some of Aphex Twin’s most controversial work, but still really interesting. Some of the rhythms at work here are ridiculously complex, the kind of thing I haven’t heard before. Has a number of dull stretches, though–some of the slower pieces didn’t hold my interest for as long as he may have thought they would.

 

On (EP):

This is a far cry from Drukqs–lots of interesting atmospherics, aimed more at generating a vibe than in making some super complex in-your-face rhythm (although there was a bit of that vibe-making on Drukqs as well). Some tunes here almost make me want to describe them as ‘pleasant’, a feel that Aphex Twin does not seem to go for very often.

Overall: Well, it’s very interesting. Nothing’s stuck with me as strongly as, say “Pharohs” by SBTRKT, but the music is complex and innovative, which means he’s probably made some solid material.