Archive for September, 2008|Monthly archive page
Henry Mancini – Symphonic Soul
Filed under: music | Tags: instrumental, orchestral, pop, score
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Nine compositions of Henry Mancini, famous composer and arranger – you must’ve heard the Pink Panther theme, well that’s him. My favourite tracks here are the more “classical” sounding ones, the first five, whereas the rest sound like dated 70s movie and TV music. Anyway, I think that this man is an important composer with a distinctive playful style and you should be aware of his work.
Miles Davis – Water Babies
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Still collectin’ Miles. This one’s from the classic period, with a remarkable band – Vitous, DeJohnette, Corea and Shorter (the first four tunes are his compositions). The last two are not that good, more like an early experiment of what will later become the electric fusion style he developed, but still interesting to hear.
Oasis – Dig Out Your Soul
No matter what, Oasis will always be special to me. Fascinated by their albums from the 90s, I’ve spent, without exaggerating, thousands of hours listening to those songs in my teen years. So after awkwardly learning how to write songs sober (SOTSOG), a forgettable disaster, except for maybe two songs (Heathen Chemistry) and a solid album with some songs still feeling forced out (Don’t Believe the Truth), what do we have here? With great pleasure I can say that it’s something really good that they haven’t done in ten years (or more, depending on your opinion on Be Here Now).
Although I consider Be Here Now fantastic, it’s still not an honest but an album of a doped band trying to capture what the magic of the first two albums. On Dig Out Your Soul Oasis finally merge all what they’ve been talking about in the past few years but which has not yet delivered a good result – contributions from all band members, a touch of psychedelia, Noel exploring country music, and generally exploration of new sounds, being more riff-based with the spontaneous energy and swagger that once made them the greatest rock’n'roll band on earth.
My favourites are The Turning, a song that begins with a typical Oasis drum intro, followed by piano, until guitars bring it full on. This has happenned before, but this time it’s really relaxed and with good vibes and a chorus that doesn’t sound like a random attempt of creating a melody in Liam’s voice.
Another is The Shock Of The Lightning – amazing how far they can take two and a half power chords : ). Liam’s ballad I’m Outta Time is full of nice little melodies naturally pieced together. The Nature of Reality is Oasis doing noisy blues, while the closer Soldier On is just… well, I now instinctively expect a new Champagne Supernova at the end of each new album. That this is not, but a very memorable echoing low-key groove (I’ve been singing it in my head for two days).
Once again, they’ve made it only rock’n'roll.
The Mars Volta – Live at the Electric Ballroom
I was looking for a good concert torrent and look what I’ve found! The Mars Volta in the De-Loused era; I’ve never seen them perform so far and for me it was jaw-dropping to see with how much passion they play. A must see.
Silence is Sexy – This Ain’t Hollywood
Dutch band Silence is Sexy have decided to distribute their album This Ain’t Hollywood, a score for an imaginary film, over the BitTorrent network. I am very happy to see more and more artists embracing the new ways of spreading their work. The idea of packaging and massively selling music via a physical medium sounds equally nonsense to both the Internet generation and eg somebody living in 19th century. Artists get very little from that price anyway, and concerts are obviously a method that’s good enough for making money. Sceptics were saying that only bands of Radiohead’s fame could afford something like this, which is obviously wrong – on contrary, it gives unknown bands huge potential of getting heard. I doubt I’d ever hear this band if there wasn’t for this for instance.
And I’m glad I found them because their blend of post-punk music is excellent! You will read something like: “From a broad pallet of musical preferences, the band develops its sound that is compared to divergent bands like Joy Division, Sonic Youth, Placebo, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine and Interpol.” I never take that kind of comparisons too seriously because they sound too perfect but I am already playing this on repeat, and it seems like a grower. Some trivia: the keyboard player is from The Gathering, the famous goth-metal band.
Giant Sand – proVISIONS
Giant Sand have been making music for more than two decades without me ever noticing. Americana at it’s best, trasmitting sounds of human desires down the desert wind. All 13 songs deserve returning full attention.
Mogwai – The Hawk Is Howling
Today is the first really bad rainy day, so is it a coincidence that I found and downloaded a new album by Mogwai? Scotland’s finest post-rock beasts have spit out another series of waves of brilliant instrumentalism. Just another or… no. It seems that they’ve combined all the dynamics, bass melody, sharp noise and dreadful peace they’re capable of making and made one wonderful album. The feeling I got reminds me of the first times that I’ve heard them. Rock Action and Young Team. The titles are still perfectly appropriate as well: I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead, Thank You Space Expert…
The Like Young – Last Secrets
The Like Young broke up in 2006, and Last Secrets is their last album. The guy and the girl are otherwise happily married. The songs go between power-pop, My Bloody Valentine-like slow drone and passionate garage indie. It sounds like it but it’s not quite sunshine music, all the time there is a taste of fall, lost desires and broken dreams. A short but intense, honest and non pretentious album.
One Day As a Lion EP
Filed under: music | Tags: electronica, experimental, hardcore, hip-hop, rock
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No matter how hard you try… Yeah so we now have Zach De La Rocha’s solo album where he’s in a duo with an ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. I don’t know, maybe we don’t need a RATM reunion after all?
Flying Lotus – Los Angeles
Filed under: music | Tags: bass, dub, electronica, experimental, hip-hop, instrumental, minimalistic, psychedelic
Leave a Comment Hey everybody! It’s been a long journey and now this blog is alive again.
A few textures deep hazy mix, perfect soundtrack to walking around a modern city in the night, when psychedelic is the escape and the means. He goes a lot further in experimentation than Massive Attack for instance. Largely instrumental, but there are three hypnotic vocal tracks as well. The torrent includes nice artwork in PDF.
