The Bedtime Beat by Lullatone is so wonderful.
just look at the track list:
The Bathtime Beat
Your Snore
The Bedtime Beatbox
Make Believe Melody
Maborshi Ondo
Marching To Sleep
Mr. Gondry
Goodnight Train
Make Believe Melody #2
Oyasumi
Awesome.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Realizations
I don't know who gave me an album by someone named William Onyeabor, but it is neither "afrobeat" nor "good".
Despite coming in the middle of Dylan's second run of utterly incredible records, The Basement Tapes kinda sucks.
I hope to never make songs called "Piggies", or "Bungalow Bill", much less the "Continuing Story" of either of the above.
I just want to listen to Duane Allman solo until I pass away.
Despite coming in the middle of Dylan's second run of utterly incredible records, The Basement Tapes kinda sucks.
I hope to never make songs called "Piggies", or "Bungalow Bill", much less the "Continuing Story" of either of the above.
I just want to listen to Duane Allman solo until I pass away.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Break Time
Been taking a little break from this deal to actually MAKE music, but here's some of the listening I've been doing:
At Home With The Groovebox (crazy compilation with a ton of huge names [we're talking Sonic Youth, Pavement, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Air, Beck, Dick Hyman, and others] basically fucking around with sleazy synths and electro drums.)
Nina Simone At Newport (Interesting live set. Not her best, but fun to listen to.)
Jim O'Rourke - Bad Timing (utterly fascinating experiment in the mixing of drone, folk, pop, and more traditional american music. Think John Fahey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Burt Bacharach thrown into a blender. Pretty damn classic if you ask me.)
The A's are officially done. Into the world of B go I. :D
At Home With The Groovebox (crazy compilation with a ton of huge names [we're talking Sonic Youth, Pavement, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Air, Beck, Dick Hyman, and others] basically fucking around with sleazy synths and electro drums.)
Nina Simone At Newport (Interesting live set. Not her best, but fun to listen to.)
Jim O'Rourke - Bad Timing (utterly fascinating experiment in the mixing of drone, folk, pop, and more traditional american music. Think John Fahey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Burt Bacharach thrown into a blender. Pretty damn classic if you ask me.)
The A's are officially done. Into the world of B go I. :D
Refining the Chaos with Coltrane and Morrisson
Woke up this morning not wanting to tackle my next album: Van Morrison's classic, essential, epic album Astral Weeks. Don't get me wrong. I fucking LOVE this record. I've spent more time listening to it than almost any other album from the 60s, the notable exception being Joni Mitchell's "Blue". An exercise in restrained improvisation, it combines the tight, stubborn adherence to form of the folk that was the fad of the time with meandering jazz improv (that sometimes borders on the Ornette-COLEMANESKUE in its chaos) with Morrison's famous soulful wail and R&B sensibilities. Got all that? Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
But let's face it: you've got to be feeling pretty free to listen to Astral Weeks. Morrison's (never reprised) shambling, genre-bending band creaks along the seams of these songs, wrestling them this way and that before they (usually) fade to black. I woke up desiring something with cohesion, and God handed me Astral Weeks and John Coltrane's proto-free-jazz Ascension record. This gets to the center of what makes this project difficult: the only dictation of my listening is cold pattern of alphabetical order. If my emotional state and the music I am to listen to intersect, it is purely a matter of coincidence.
But it can also make for some beautiful surprises. Ascension, which I'd never listened to before, was pretty awesome. I especially loved the solo by alto sax John Tchicai, which kind of screeches and wails and forces your ear back to the music(which it inevitably drifts from when trying to decipher the mountain of sound bellowing from Coltrane & Co). Every single one of the musicians really stretches out, and the whole 40 minute deal makes the closing vamp, which I'm told is borrowed from Trane's own A Love Supreme, all the more powerful and resonant. I'm no expert on free jazz, and to tell the truth, it's still mostly just dissonance to my ears. But I can't say that I disliked this album. Something stuck out, and I'm kinda excited for repeated listenings.
//JOHN COLTRANE - ASCENSION//GREAT TUNE: N/A (single-piece record)//
After taking in the crazy musical beast that is Ascension, Astral Weeks seemed like a tiny task. It was almost like Coltrane was setting me up to dig on Morrison that much harder. Even the nearly ten minute-long "Madame George" was a pleasing excursion. That moment around 7:55 when the strings kick back in with the coda....pure ecstasy. Yeah, I just might be able to handle this project.
//VAN MORRISON - ASTRAL WEEKS//GREAT TUNE: "Sweet Thing"//
But let's face it: you've got to be feeling pretty free to listen to Astral Weeks. Morrison's (never reprised) shambling, genre-bending band creaks along the seams of these songs, wrestling them this way and that before they (usually) fade to black. I woke up desiring something with cohesion, and God handed me Astral Weeks and John Coltrane's proto-free-jazz Ascension record. This gets to the center of what makes this project difficult: the only dictation of my listening is cold pattern of alphabetical order. If my emotional state and the music I am to listen to intersect, it is purely a matter of coincidence.
But it can also make for some beautiful surprises. Ascension, which I'd never listened to before, was pretty awesome. I especially loved the solo by alto sax John Tchicai, which kind of screeches and wails and forces your ear back to the music(which it inevitably drifts from when trying to decipher the mountain of sound bellowing from Coltrane & Co). Every single one of the musicians really stretches out, and the whole 40 minute deal makes the closing vamp, which I'm told is borrowed from Trane's own A Love Supreme, all the more powerful and resonant. I'm no expert on free jazz, and to tell the truth, it's still mostly just dissonance to my ears. But I can't say that I disliked this album. Something stuck out, and I'm kinda excited for repeated listenings.
//JOHN COLTRANE - ASCENSION//GREAT TUNE: N/A (single-piece record)//
After taking in the crazy musical beast that is Ascension, Astral Weeks seemed like a tiny task. It was almost like Coltrane was setting me up to dig on Morrison that much harder. Even the nearly ten minute-long "Madame George" was a pleasing excursion. That moment around 7:55 when the strings kick back in with the coda....pure ecstasy. Yeah, I just might be able to handle this project.
//VAN MORRISON - ASTRAL WEEKS//GREAT TUNE: "Sweet Thing"//
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Catch up!
Now I won't normally be doing straight-forward reviews like this, but when I made this blog, I was already a TON of albums in, so I figured it would be easier to just group them and review them to catch you up on the project than to write witty essays on all of them. Enjoy!
What a way to begin: Clicking 'album' in my iTunes library yielded a familiar smile and a "hell yeah" head nod, as I discovered what my first album would be: Santana's masterpiece psychedelic-latin-jazz-rock album, Abraxas. What can I say? It's still completely brilliant, and I still know a ton of people in bands that are chasing after a sound that Santana perfected 40 years ago. If you don't have it, get it. You will dance. You will rock. You will trip. You will sing. You will fall in love. You will love it.
//SANTANA - ABRAXAS//GREAT TUNE: "Oye Como Va" //
Next up was one of my favorites from the teenage years, The Smashing Pumpkins' totally direction-changing Adore. Now, a lot of amazing rock bands have made dramatic, sweeping stylistic changes mid-career. But when Billy Corgan did it, he changed the formula a bit by writing the best songs of his career. Some of these tunes are so good you literally can't believe he wrote them. It's almost completely devoid of distortion, instead favoring an approach based almost entirely on three relatively untapped components of the Pumpkins' sound: electronics, piano, and acoustic guitar. This album is dark and haunting, while still adhering to bright, sweet melody. The artwork, which is completely black and white, perfectly describes the record. This is the sound of someone completely swallowed by loss (which, for Corgan, meant his wife to divorce, his drummer to drug addiction, his touring keyboardist to death by overdose, and his mother to cancer), but without the chaos and dissonance one might anticipate. This is the record Paul McCartney would've made in Corgan's situation. Like, exactly. Corgan seldom touched this proficiency in composition before, and never did it again. So catch him on Adore, while he was hot.
//THE SMASHING PUMPKINS - ADORE//GREAT TUNE: "Blank Page"//
The next day, I got very driven and listened to a big chunk of records while playing video games (one of the best ways, I find, for me to focus on music). First up was Advisory Committee by Mirah, a record which I first discovered on a car ride with my pal Micaela. Mirah's an interesting artist, kind of a female Bright Eyes in a way: very expressive, but lyrically similar from song to song; brilliantly diverse in sound. This isn't my favorite record, because I have always felt that the songs sounded underdeveloped and hurried out. The intense orchestral opener "Cold Cold Water" blasts out of the gate, but the album largely descends in dynamic from there. You'll probably find yourself drifting in and out of interest and inattention as the album progresses, and despite a few years of listening, I still can't tell the tunes in the string of 3-minutes-or-less tracks towards the middle apart. But that's okay: for her wide reach, Mirah doesn't aspire to take over your ears. She just wants to be there with you for a moment, speak her mind gently, and disappear.
//MIRAH - ADVISORY COMMITTEE// GREAT TUNE - "Mt. St. Helens"//
After that, I tackled Neil Young's most accessible record as a folkie, "After The Goldrush". What can you say? It's a really solid group of songs. I mean, Neil did better folk on Harvest, but this is his most consistent record for sure. Acoustic guitar, Drums, bass, piano, lots of harmonies, Neil's in distress here, but it's such an amazingly reliable record to listen to at any age, in any era, that it's evident that the dude tapped into something really important and special. A classic.
//NEIL YOUNG - AFTER THE GOLDRUSH//GREAT TUNE - "Don't Let It Bring You Down"//
Next was Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun, which I'll cop to having never heard all the way through. I just haven't been able to get in to Sigur Ros lately, which made this the perfect record for the project.That said, it was totally their best. I got a little weary from the epicness about 3/4 of the way through, but it is still a remarkable accomplishment.
//SIGUR ROS - AGAETIS BYRJUN//GREAT TUNE - "Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa"//
Next up was a duet from Brian Eno's famous Ambient series. Eno invented ambient, and these records are utterly perfect distillations of the medium. Whereas Ambient 4: On Land is much darker, with a lot more sounds, including a lot of samples from nature. To be frank, it's a lot more difficult listening. I can't really see why anyone would recreationally listen to this, because its pretty unsettling. But still awesome for the statement it made. The real treat Is Ambient One: Music For Airports. This is in the running for my favorite album of all time, and still would be on the basis of its first track alone. Pure blissed out tape loop minimalist soundscape, I would recommend this for anyone with ears.
//BRIAN ENO - AMBIENT 4: ON LAND|AMBIENT ONE: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS//GREAT TUNE - "A Clearing"|"1-1"//
Don Caballero's American Don record is absolutely fantastic musically, but you can't really expect anything else from them: this was the height of their creativity, and the guitars are so intensely novel, precise, and downright brilliant from front to back that you will not believe your ears. Literally. These guys have a penchant for harmony that is absolutely unparalleled in the "post-rock" world. It's a shame that the overly-roomy way in which the drums were recorded makes it so I cant fucking STAND listening to this album for more than 2 minutes. Ugh. Steve Albini really knows how to fuck up a record sometimes.
//DON CABALLERO - AMERICAN DON//GREAT TUNE - "You Drink A Lot Of Coffee For A Teenager"//
Johnny Cash's American V: A Hundred Highways is pure fucking brilliance. Johnny Cash managed to STILL be at the top of his game at age 345345, and Rick Rubin recreates his charm so faithfully that you can't help but be sucked in. Johnny does a ton of incredible covers, nailing all of them, and a few originals that will blow any conception you had of songwriting being a young man's game completely out of the water.
//JOHNNY CASH - AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS//GREAT TUNE - "Like The 309"//
Amnesiac is probably my least favorite Radiohead record, which means that it's still pretty damn good. "Pyramid Song" is the best thing the band ever made, and the other tracks are real nice too. A bunch of them admittedly sound like filler, but at least Radiohead filler is still persistently interesting. Like you need me to talk about this album anyway.
//RADIOHEAD - AMNESIAC//GREAT TUNE - "Pyramid Song"//
Next I tackled Ananda Shankar's self titled record, which is a cool blend of sitar-laden classic rock covers and standard raga stuff with a bit of a western edge. I liked it.
//ANANDA SHANKAR - S/T//GREAT TUNE - "Light My Fire"//
I only have disc one of Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline, but I loved it. This is an hour or so of super solid ambient drone. I'll definitely be getting disc two ASAP.
//STARS OF THE LID - AND THEIR REFINEMENT OF THE DECLINE//GREAT TUNE: All of them.//
The Kinks' Arthur or The Decline Of The British Empire, from '69, when a lot of bands published their super watershed records, was not a watershed record. There are a couple good tracks, but it's definitely not their best. Probably okay to skip when perusing their amazingly large catalog.
//THE KINKS - ARTHUR or THE DECLINE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE//GREAT TUNE - "Victoria"//
As Performed By.....Aerial M was the first solo record David Pajo ever made (So far back that he hadn't even adopted the monicker of Papa M yet, and he's gone through 3 more since then), and he already just went for it creatively. You can see him doing the classic Pajo thing which is to pull from everything around him and just have fun making a solo record. This is by far the lightest touch he ever gave a record, as it's (I believe) completely devoid of distortion. Just guitar, drums and bass. Beautiful melodies give way to even more beautiful ones. Oh, also some of the most brilliant use of tritones and dissonance in general that I've ever heard. Somehow he makes dissonance sound completely consonant. The first track on here, "Dazed And Awake" is one of my most favorite "post-rock" tunes of all time. Nobody knows this album exists, but everybody should.
//AERIAL M - AS PERFORMED BY....//GREAT TUNE - "Dazed And Awake"//
So we've only got a couple more albums until A is over, and I'll be one twenty-sixth of the way finished. Holy smokes.
What a way to begin: Clicking 'album' in my iTunes library yielded a familiar smile and a "hell yeah" head nod, as I discovered what my first album would be: Santana's masterpiece psychedelic-latin-jazz-rock album, Abraxas. What can I say? It's still completely brilliant, and I still know a ton of people in bands that are chasing after a sound that Santana perfected 40 years ago. If you don't have it, get it. You will dance. You will rock. You will trip. You will sing. You will fall in love. You will love it.
//SANTANA - ABRAXAS//GREAT TUNE: "Oye Como Va" //
Next up was one of my favorites from the teenage years, The Smashing Pumpkins' totally direction-changing Adore. Now, a lot of amazing rock bands have made dramatic, sweeping stylistic changes mid-career. But when Billy Corgan did it, he changed the formula a bit by writing the best songs of his career. Some of these tunes are so good you literally can't believe he wrote them. It's almost completely devoid of distortion, instead favoring an approach based almost entirely on three relatively untapped components of the Pumpkins' sound: electronics, piano, and acoustic guitar. This album is dark and haunting, while still adhering to bright, sweet melody. The artwork, which is completely black and white, perfectly describes the record. This is the sound of someone completely swallowed by loss (which, for Corgan, meant his wife to divorce, his drummer to drug addiction, his touring keyboardist to death by overdose, and his mother to cancer), but without the chaos and dissonance one might anticipate. This is the record Paul McCartney would've made in Corgan's situation. Like, exactly. Corgan seldom touched this proficiency in composition before, and never did it again. So catch him on Adore, while he was hot.
//THE SMASHING PUMPKINS - ADORE//GREAT TUNE: "Blank Page"//
The next day, I got very driven and listened to a big chunk of records while playing video games (one of the best ways, I find, for me to focus on music). First up was Advisory Committee by Mirah, a record which I first discovered on a car ride with my pal Micaela. Mirah's an interesting artist, kind of a female Bright Eyes in a way: very expressive, but lyrically similar from song to song; brilliantly diverse in sound. This isn't my favorite record, because I have always felt that the songs sounded underdeveloped and hurried out. The intense orchestral opener "Cold Cold Water" blasts out of the gate, but the album largely descends in dynamic from there. You'll probably find yourself drifting in and out of interest and inattention as the album progresses, and despite a few years of listening, I still can't tell the tunes in the string of 3-minutes-or-less tracks towards the middle apart. But that's okay: for her wide reach, Mirah doesn't aspire to take over your ears. She just wants to be there with you for a moment, speak her mind gently, and disappear.
//MIRAH - ADVISORY COMMITTEE// GREAT TUNE - "Mt. St. Helens"//
After that, I tackled Neil Young's most accessible record as a folkie, "After The Goldrush". What can you say? It's a really solid group of songs. I mean, Neil did better folk on Harvest, but this is his most consistent record for sure. Acoustic guitar, Drums, bass, piano, lots of harmonies, Neil's in distress here, but it's such an amazingly reliable record to listen to at any age, in any era, that it's evident that the dude tapped into something really important and special. A classic.
//NEIL YOUNG - AFTER THE GOLDRUSH//GREAT TUNE - "Don't Let It Bring You Down"//
Next was Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun, which I'll cop to having never heard all the way through. I just haven't been able to get in to Sigur Ros lately, which made this the perfect record for the project.That said, it was totally their best. I got a little weary from the epicness about 3/4 of the way through, but it is still a remarkable accomplishment.
//SIGUR ROS - AGAETIS BYRJUN//GREAT TUNE - "Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa"//
Next up was a duet from Brian Eno's famous Ambient series. Eno invented ambient, and these records are utterly perfect distillations of the medium. Whereas Ambient 4: On Land is much darker, with a lot more sounds, including a lot of samples from nature. To be frank, it's a lot more difficult listening. I can't really see why anyone would recreationally listen to this, because its pretty unsettling. But still awesome for the statement it made. The real treat Is Ambient One: Music For Airports. This is in the running for my favorite album of all time, and still would be on the basis of its first track alone. Pure blissed out tape loop minimalist soundscape, I would recommend this for anyone with ears.
//BRIAN ENO - AMBIENT 4: ON LAND|AMBIENT ONE: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS//GREAT TUNE - "A Clearing"|"1-1"//
Don Caballero's American Don record is absolutely fantastic musically, but you can't really expect anything else from them: this was the height of their creativity, and the guitars are so intensely novel, precise, and downright brilliant from front to back that you will not believe your ears. Literally. These guys have a penchant for harmony that is absolutely unparalleled in the "post-rock" world. It's a shame that the overly-roomy way in which the drums were recorded makes it so I cant fucking STAND listening to this album for more than 2 minutes. Ugh. Steve Albini really knows how to fuck up a record sometimes.
//DON CABALLERO - AMERICAN DON//GREAT TUNE - "You Drink A Lot Of Coffee For A Teenager"//
Johnny Cash's American V: A Hundred Highways is pure fucking brilliance. Johnny Cash managed to STILL be at the top of his game at age 345345, and Rick Rubin recreates his charm so faithfully that you can't help but be sucked in. Johnny does a ton of incredible covers, nailing all of them, and a few originals that will blow any conception you had of songwriting being a young man's game completely out of the water.
//JOHNNY CASH - AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS//GREAT TUNE - "Like The 309"//
Amnesiac is probably my least favorite Radiohead record, which means that it's still pretty damn good. "Pyramid Song" is the best thing the band ever made, and the other tracks are real nice too. A bunch of them admittedly sound like filler, but at least Radiohead filler is still persistently interesting. Like you need me to talk about this album anyway.
//RADIOHEAD - AMNESIAC//GREAT TUNE - "Pyramid Song"//
Next I tackled Ananda Shankar's self titled record, which is a cool blend of sitar-laden classic rock covers and standard raga stuff with a bit of a western edge. I liked it.
//ANANDA SHANKAR - S/T//GREAT TUNE - "Light My Fire"//
I only have disc one of Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline, but I loved it. This is an hour or so of super solid ambient drone. I'll definitely be getting disc two ASAP.
//STARS OF THE LID - AND THEIR REFINEMENT OF THE DECLINE//GREAT TUNE: All of them.//
The Kinks' Arthur or The Decline Of The British Empire, from '69, when a lot of bands published their super watershed records, was not a watershed record. There are a couple good tracks, but it's definitely not their best. Probably okay to skip when perusing their amazingly large catalog.
//THE KINKS - ARTHUR or THE DECLINE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE//GREAT TUNE - "Victoria"//
As Performed By.....Aerial M was the first solo record David Pajo ever made (So far back that he hadn't even adopted the monicker of Papa M yet, and he's gone through 3 more since then), and he already just went for it creatively. You can see him doing the classic Pajo thing which is to pull from everything around him and just have fun making a solo record. This is by far the lightest touch he ever gave a record, as it's (I believe) completely devoid of distortion. Just guitar, drums and bass. Beautiful melodies give way to even more beautiful ones. Oh, also some of the most brilliant use of tritones and dissonance in general that I've ever heard. Somehow he makes dissonance sound completely consonant. The first track on here, "Dazed And Awake" is one of my most favorite "post-rock" tunes of all time. Nobody knows this album exists, but everybody should.
//AERIAL M - AS PERFORMED BY....//GREAT TUNE - "Dazed And Awake"//
So we've only got a couple more albums until A is over, and I'll be one twenty-sixth of the way finished. Holy smokes.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Introduction.
I find myself in this situation every day: I want to listen to music, but I'm not sure just what music. I look to my iTunes library (which, like most people's, has been steadily growing for about 5-6 years now), beginning with A (sorted by artist) and swiftly become completely overwhelmed. Just taking in and synthesizing the information I see before my eyes from Aaron Copland to Autechre is enough of a chore to make me close the program and watch reruns of The Drew Carey Show instead.
And it's hurting my music listening.
Can I get an amen? The sheer breadth of musical output there is to take in, coupled with its frighteningly immediate level of availability makes the modern music library a sparkling bohemoth of Afro-Soul-Ragtime-Dance-Rock-Bluegrass-Blues-Folk-Electro-Classical-Punk-Noise-Metal-Avant Garde-Pop. My personal library is 37 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes, and 43 seconds long. I'd estimate that I haven't even heard about a third of it.
I, nay, we need to grow more familiar with our libraries. Don't you love that dude who can point to his wall of records and pull out the perfect LP to fit the mood of the moment? Well libraries like my iTunes Behemoth are kinda killing that dude. He's on his last legs. His drag is old, and the digital drag is new. We're building massive walls of unlistened-to music that's filling up our harddrives and blacking out our hearts. We're completely uninformed when it comes to that perfect lovemakin' funk album or the Rockinest, Ramblin'est Route 66 raga record.
It's time to slay the beast and become intimate with our records again. So, of course, I decided to get mathematical with it. Here's the plan: take the winter, and listen to all of it. That's right, all of it. In alphabetical order. If this sounds like a tiny task to you, ask yourself: could you? 37 days + worth of music. That's enough for about 2,664 episodes of The Drew Carey Show. Still want to challenge my ear-fortitude? I didn't think so. So wish me luck instead.
Here are the rules:
- The library (The Behemoth) must be listened to in alphabetical order by album. All "straggler" tracks (songs whose corresponding album I do not own the rest of) come at the end of the project, also in alphabetical order by album.
- Songs may not be paused. If they are, they must be restarted.
- Albums may be stopped during the breaks between tracks and resumed later (I have a life).
- Albums may be deleted if I decide I don't like them mid-album, but I must enter into a contract never to obtain these albums again.
- If circumstance dictates (eg. The extended family doesn't want to hear Jay-Z during Christmas dinner), albums may be skipped in favor of the next album in alphabetical order, but must be returned to before moving on to the next alphabetical-order letter in the library.
- Rules may be added as necessary to preserve the sanity of the listener (they will appear in this post as well as the post immediately following the addition), but may not be retracted.
- If I own a record on vinyl, I must give my poor ears a freakin' break from the digital meltdown that is iTunes by enjoying it in its intended medium of consumption.
Do I recommend this project for everyone? I'll let you know in March. :)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
