The Torrent Times

Archive for January 2009

Oceana – The Tide

Posted by: mx on: January 28, 2009

Oceana are a very young and interesting post-hardcore band, sounding quite focused and passionate. The sound is hard to classify as it goes between screamo, a few clean melodies, metal riffing and drumming, prog licks and post-rock instrumental atmospherics. Still don’t expect them to be particularly catchy, the music takes a lot to really grasp [...]

Beirut – March Of The Zapotec / Holland

Posted by: mx on: January 27, 2009

Zach Condon aka Beirut returns with two short EPs, one recorded with a brass funeral band from Oaxaca, another being, er, indie synth pop. I think the first is more interesting, although to me it actually sounds like a second-rate Balkan brass band playing without a few members by the end of a wedding/funeral. This [...]

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Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Old Money

Posted by: mx on: January 20, 2009

Song titles such as How To Bill The Bilderberg Group and I Like Rockefellers’ First Two Albums, But After That… sure do promise a great blast of prog rock and free jazz? After listening to Omar’s music (At the Drive-In, De Facto, Mars Volta, solo works) for almost ten years now, this album brings yet [...]

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The Bronx III

Posted by: mx on: January 20, 2009

There have been so far two essential rock’n’roll howls in my life that I always return to: those of At The Drive-In and Icarus Line. I think I’ve just found the third. The Bronx are compulsory.
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band website

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Posted by: mx on: January 18, 2009

When Twiligh Omens ended, it was fourth perfect modern pop rock song in a row from the start of the album. I worried what kind of a beast it is going to become. A few songs later, I was, to bo honest, relieved – they were good but not as brilliant as the openers, so [...]

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Pink Floyd – 1967 Singles Sampler

Posted by: mx on: January 17, 2009

I think some of these songs are not that easy to find actually? Here’s the tracklist:

Arnold Lane
Candy and a Current Bun
See Emily Play
Scarecrow
Apples and Oranges
Paintbox

I didn’t have them at least, and I like Syd Barrett, so there.
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DJ Shadow – The 4-Track Era

Posted by: mx on: January 12, 2009

There’s a very cool limited edition release from DJ Shadow out there that’s slowly been appearing on the torrent scene. It’s 4 volume set of his early mixes that he originally made on his, you guessed it, 4-track recorder.
My favourite here is the first volume prepared in 1991 for a Bay Area radio station, which [...]

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The Aliens – Luna

Posted by: mx on: January 11, 2009

A great release from The Aliens, whose members stem from Beta Band. The album goes on for more than an hour, two songs over ten minutes, but this album is in fact a constant stream of different musical ideas – sometimes they’re pieced together in one song, sometimes they split, lose the focus a bit [...]

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Posted by: mx on: January 7, 2009

Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of those albums which, after you’ve listened to it for the first time, you don’t really remember a lot, it leaves you overwhelmed with sounds but you just know that you’re gonna love it as you listen to it again and again. My ticket to the strange world of Animal Collective [...]

The Herbaliser – Same As It Never Was

Posted by: mx on: January 3, 2009

Same as it never was begins as if it’s an instrumental hip-hop album. And hip-hop really is the root of Herbaliser’s music, played by a mini orchestra around Londoners Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba. But only a couple of seconds later it reveals its true kaleidoscopic face, made of glaring elements of funk, jazz, soul [...]