This my rave page. (Gotta share the great things in life and great music is hard to find.) It's also going to be a bit about my own musical journey.
February 7, 2009
I'm still working on that last track, both mixing and finessing. I've decided that synth and sampled strings just suck for this piece, so I'm looking to hire a string player. But otherwise, the piece is going really well. I keep thinking the best thing I can do is leave it alone, get some perspective on it, and come back to it with really fresh ears in a while.
To that end, I too a break this morning (after 2½ hours of work on it) and decided to make a first stab at setting the order of the tracks. Well... was that ever a revelation. Here, I thought there was only a very tenuous consistency between my seven little pieces. Turns out, they have much in common. Lots of drum kit and percussion, various basses, a lot of strings, guitars and subtle effects. The essential thing I took away from this first glancing listen, was that in all pieces, the groove is all important. Oh, and I like to fuck up the listener with polyrhythms. I love that delirious sensation of falling when you lose the downbeat and have to hunt for it.
Last week I called this stuff cinematic dark jazz. This week, I'm not so sure that's what it is. It'll probably get lumped in with IDM, but in no way is it dance music. Truth be told, there's a vast gulf between the music I love to listen to and the music I love to create. How that happened, I don't know. But I suspect it's from the process of discovery that's involved in the creation of every piece of music. Self-consistency is a sine qua non of every work of art. And because of that, the artist, to a certain extent, is just along for the ride. So today, I'm going to call this stuff fusion. (Yeah, there's an F word for you.) There's everything in the pot, and though you'll be able to tell what I've loved over the years (classical , rock, jazz, world, electronica, etc), you'll have to wonder what weird brain filter was in effect when these pieces were created. I'm happy wondering myself.
January 31, 2009
Well, that piece I described below fell through about a week later. For the past two months, I've been hard at resuscitating a piece I'd rejected for the album (see May 24th entry, below). I tossed all the fancy chord progressions I'd worked so hard on and heaved the third of the three melodies and started with a very simple palette. It didn't take long - maybe ten days - to come up with a satisfying structural arc for the revamped piece. And then I hit a wall.
The wall was a break in the piece, a bridge that I couldn't, for the life of me, get to work in any complimentary way. Weeks of hard testing, introductions of new instruments, dozens of melodic variations, ensued. I tell you, the thing nearly made me give up hope that I might have any talent in composition. Not to be melodramatic, but the last month was a friggin horror for me. Day after day of failure. Fucking hell.... I almost chucked the whole thing.
And then the other day I figured it out - what to do with this break. I got it going, reached a very happy place yesterday, and today, absolutely nailed the structure and instrumentation of the rest of the piece. It has now turned into a very joyful section of music. I even considered making this the first piece on the album - that's how confident I am in it.
So now I have seven pieces for the CD - a total of maybe forty-odd minutes of music. In a way, it's not much time, but man... a hell of a lot of work has gone into these few pieces. And I'm nowhere near finishing mixing them. But at least now I have a cohesive whole, a very odd, very modern, fairly unique cinematic dark jazz album.
November 30, 2008
So, I have six pieces now (and three rejects) and started working on a new one this morning. I got about two hours into it and every time I played it from the beginning to where I was working, I burst out laughing for sheer joy. How often does that happen to you, listening to music? This piece is some kind of salsa that's threatening to blow its wad about thirty seconds in. It sounds like a Latin band with a tabla player sitting in. Only he's not playing tabla, but has picked up some crude, Pictish goatskin drum and is scratching it like a DJ. Just a little demented.
I'm so happy with my other six pieces, I can't even tell you. After I finished the segue piece (see Nov 9, below), I spent a chunk of time mixing three of the others. Holy crap... do I ever like them. I have never heard anything like any of them, ever. (And I've listened to a heck of a lot of music). But, hey, if I set out to duplicate someone else's efforts, I would never have embarked on this project to begin with.
Lately I've been doing some molar-grinding over what to do with them when I'm done - live performance-wise. Do I go the Ableton/laptop route? Or hire musicians and play concerts in clubs? And then I thought, fuck it. I've listened to thousands of artists' music over the past several decades and rarely wished to hear any of them live. Why would I? I have their very best quality audio version in my own little hands, right now. So, for now, I'm not going to sweat it. I'm thinking of this album as destined for the zillion iPods out there, not the comparative handful of live music clubs.
November 9, 2008
Working on a new piece. It started out life as a segue between larger, longer pieces and in a couple of days has morphed into a pizzicato Bolero with subtly tangled rhythms. Another innocent ditty that's been corrupted by the demon Complexity. I think it was Teilhard de Chardin that said it was the tendency of all things to complexify. Well, of that's the case, they don't need me drop-kicking them toward it. And yet...
October 15, 2008
Pretty funny to read below that THAT'S where I was at a month ago. Pretty sad to think I've been working on it, hard, every day since. But at least I'm nearly done. I've been slaving away at this piece since July. Not maybe thinking about it every few days and giving it another go. No, it's more like, obsessing over it night and day, running at it full speed at every opportunity. About 90% of the time I'd go too far and have to retreat, frustrated that those many hours were wasted.
But I got real close a week ago. And then I clued in I needed to add one more instrument. Bring back the bass. (The instrument, not the asylum-worthy riff from before.) That clinched it. And now all that needs doing is mixing.
It kind of bugs me that I'm going straight at dark jazz like some kind of will-less zombie. What the hell is that? What is it about that music that impels me toward it? Why isn't my music all synthy and sci-fi, like I imagined it would be before I had the tools to create these pieces? Hmm...
September 11, 2008
Still working on that piece. Yesterday I edited the bass every which way from Sunday and it just did not come together. So I turfed it entirely this morning. And lo and behold, that dang thing came alive. It now sounds like a a bunch of classically trained Cuban vampires playing a dirge for a fallen buddy. Yikes. It started out as a psy-trance piece, believe it or not. How the hell it ended up here, I'll never know.
Having a tough time with good new music lately. Ott, Entheogenic and Banco de Gaia, my musical heroes, all came out with middling new works this year. Have they all eaten the same stupid pill? One edgy piece each per album isn't good enough, guys. I keep poking the WWW for good new music - like a monkey with anant stick - and coming up with zeroes. Goa-trance? Let me puke in your kick drum and short circuit it for you. Trust me, I'll be doing you a favor. Lounge? Holy fuck... how many years are you going to yarp the same shite? Lounge died five decades ago because it put people to sleep. No edge? Suck this. Ambient? You know, there is a limit to glitching, a limit to slow-mo pads. No dynamics? Fuck off.
Ok, rant over. Shoved off this plateau of musical mediocrity, I feel like I'm clinging to a dozen great albums on my way down. What's to blame? Do I have that short an attention span? Naw... It's like rich food. You can't eat that much at once. But you can trick yourself into eating more by having a great variety of it. Trouble is, if you listen to all of your favorite tracks in one day, and do the same the next day and the next, you a) expect all new stuff to be just as great and b) are going to wear out your welcome with those great tracks if you keep it up. Do I listen to shite? Yup, all the time. Deliberately. It's my palate cleanser. It's just real sad to have nothing great OR new for the entree.
September 1, 2008
Yesterday I spent coring tons of apples and pitting a ton of prune plums, all for sauce. Yesterday. Yes, the whole day. When I woke up this morning the last thing I wanted to see was fruit of any sort. There was one day left of this long weekend and I was determined to spend the better part of it completing the structure of this crazy-assed piece of music. I woke up this morning with the thought, OK, just start at the end and work back. Lame as the idea was, it worked. I knew immediately what the ending was going to be. After about two and a half or three hours, I did it. I did what I'd been striving to do for over a month now. The only substantial thing I added was a right hand piano part. It's this very simple, almost lullaby-ish tune, and I tempered the naivete of it by playing it with sevenths and ninths throughout.
Halle-freakin-lujah. The piece is still in the construction stage. Most of the instruments and wavs are temp files. When it's done, it's going to be a piece that any modern ballet company would find well-worth dancing to. It's going to find a real comfy home with the rest of the tracks on my CD. This is the seventh piece. Two or three more, and I'll be content.
August 24, 2008
So, I've been working on a piece for the past, maybe, three weeks. I got this nutzoid bass track laid down and have literally spent every day agonizing over what the hell to do with it. I've tried or considered everything. Every freaking instrument and style. I lost count of how many muted and abandoned tracks I've got laid alongside this lunatic bass line, but it's got to be over thirty. Ok, I just counted and it's 64. A half dozen are midi and wav construction tracks, but still.
So about a week ago, I stumbled on a drum kit riff that was so perfect, it not only restored my faith in the track and my creative abilities, but it completely blew me away. This was Nirvana. Nothing could be better than this. And for the next week, nothing was. Once again I returned to experimenting, goofing around, fucking up and agonizing. Nothing worked. What third element could be added this this crazy piece? Nothing went. Everything subtracted from it rather than added.
And then yesterday, it hit me what I needed to do. I was away from the computer, thinking of everything but music, and blammo. It hit me. Next time I got up to my studio (that day), I sat down with a grand piano patch and nailed it. Holy shit... now I had a tune to die for.
So now I have a friggin bass line march-of-the-Lemmings-With-Guns, a trance-inducing drum track, and a piano that's doing a a happy-but-determined little waltz.
The first three minutes of this piece are magic. Flippin Merlin-Harry Potter-Witches of Eastwick all drunk on a Merry-Go-Round magic. All I have to do now is not screw it up.
May 24, 2008
After spending about a month or six weeks doing nothing but mixing, I started on a new track a few weeks ago. It started out all innocent, a funky piano tune with bass and drums accompaniment. I played the original tune live and edited the hell out of it. But what to do with it? Where to go? I had endless options and headed down at least 20 dead-end paths. Finally I settled on the simplest possible structure: vary the key, but keep the tune essentially the same throughout. Wash, rinse and repeat. It's not unlike that sixties pop tune, Sunshine, Lollipops, but pure jazz trio, all the way. But how to modulate it?
Do I keep the key the same and alter the starting note? Well, that sure killed the melody in a hurry. I was trying to get into a groove here, not write the next Beach Boys ditty. I tried just altering the key, going up a third or down a third, or going from major to relative minor, but it all just sounded ridiculous.
For like, six days, I went off on a tangent and started adding instruments and effects. All trash. Then tried other variations of the three-part tune. All terrible.
So the other day, I said screw this. I'm going back to my elementary harmony and fart around with some basic modulations. (Incidentally, I was quite concerned about the original key of the piece at the outset. I kind of got stuck in am F/Eb/Ab rut for more than a couple of pieces already and I wanted to do something completely different. So this one was going to be in C#.)
La-la-la, I popped the piece up a fifth for the first variation, and it sounded pretty good. So I continued, editing the midi for about four variations, messing with the rhythm here and there as I went along. Well, donut that I am, it took a whole friggin twenty minutes of hard-core editing to realize I was going to have to go all the way around the circle of fifths if I wanted to get back the beginning. Fuck that! But what else could I do?
So I sat down with an Excel spreadsheet and mapped out the modulations. Hey, I could alternate between 4ths and 5ths! No, that was stupid: in two jumps I'd be back at C#. Duh... How about a pattern of 4/4/5, 4/4/5?
That was almost as daft as pure 5ths or 4th/5ths. Luckily I made a few miscalculations and ended up with a mess that actually worked extremely well, revving the piece with 5ths toward the end.
Then I had to make my bass track match this. I didn't want it to follow the piano exactly. So I got the bass to change only in the first two of the three parts of the tune, (staying the same in the last two) and the piano would seem to come to meet the bass in the last third. Fucking hell, did that ever work.
So now I feel like big fancy-pants composer guy. The piece already has a friggin magic rhythmic base to it. And now I'm completely gaga over it.
Here's a little (unmixed) sample from the intro. It starts off with part three of the melody, jumps to part two, then part three plays again. (Part one isn't heard and starts later.) Number 6 sample.
March 9, 2008
I just finished revamping another piece, the Aldous Huxley one. It was a hellish workout. At several points, I just about abandoned it as unworkable. The whole point of the piece about how propaganda works because of repitition. So I needed elements that could be repeated (with minor variations) for five minutes straight without becoming tedious. I even studied the melodic arc of Ravel's Bolero at one point, and created this killer bass-line emulating it. But it was too much. What I ended up with was a much simpler bass-line with this constantly changing vamp every few bars. The last thing I did was take my original live drum performance and hand-typed it into midi, so I could do subtle variations and fills. Man, did that ever work out well.
So now I have four finished pieces and a fifth that is so experimental, I don't know if I'll end up using it. It's really out there. About a week ago, I came home from work after a day of non-stop music listening, bummed that it was all so mediocre. I put on a couple of my own tracks, and... holy shit... there was no comparison. I just wanted to listen to that all day. I know it's just a taste thing, but it's sure nice to produce something you're proud of.
February 24, 2008
I've been working on my CD. I just finished the fifth track the other week and went back to the fourth one and cranked up the quality by a factor of ten. The fifth piece was a bit of a revelation to me. I created the structure before I wrote a note of it. That's no doubt an exceedingly common practice, but it's the first time I did, and man... there's no looking back now. It worked like magic. It left me free to work on any part, any time, even though I ended up creating it sequentially. When I went back to the fourth piece, all the problems with it popped out on one hearing, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. The result is spectacular. Now I just have the other three to work on. I just listened to the first two. One is fine; the other can use some serious work.
On the piece I finished today, #4, I got to do some real orchestration. It's pretty simple, but miles away from the single melodic thread stuff I've done up to now. Huge fun. And for the first time, I'm confident I have the makings of a really cool album. I've yet to decide if I'll run the tracks into one another and make one huge structure. We'll see.
I received Ott's latest the other day. Sadly, I'm not as impressed as I thought I'd be. The track, Rogue Bagel, still stands out as the best. I have to get Simon Posford's latest now.
November 16, 2007
The highlight of my year: there's a new album by Ott coming out this Monday.
October 20, 2007
Because of my nearly four-week flu, I had a lot of time in front of the tv and computer. I thought I'd found a whole ton of new music and spent waaaay too much time surveying the genres Goa-trance and psy-trance. I did find a ton of great new music, but the survey left me a bit pissed that there is so much effort being spent by technically compitent musicians on such a crap medium. Psy-trance, the latest incarnation of Goa-trance, isn't so bad. But holy god... the Goa formula of "spacey intro, 808 kick and mindless melange of reverb/delay/flange fx" really started to get me down. I get that conformity to a genre sells tracks, but holy shit... we got enough already. The bucket's full! Do something different!
September 1, 2007
I've got four tracks for my CD now. Three are at the finessing stage. One is screaming for its vocals. I just have to get it together and hire someone. Two of the finished tracks are kind of boppy neo-classical. One is straight up experimental. And the vocal one is pretty much dubbish trip-hop. I'm so crazy critical that I'm not happy with any of them, really. But I'll get there. It may take a year more, but I'll get there.
July 31, 2007
Here are a few quickie thoughts about music I've bumped into lately.
Morgan Packard, Airships Fill The Sky
Genre: Lofi/SciFi/Ambient/Experimental
This lovely album put a smile on my face from the first track. This guy knows sound. What's cool, what's moody, what's cliche and what's not. I don't know anything about Morgan Packard, but I'd buy anything he makes. Subtle beats, unique instrumentation, fx like alien industrial machinery brought into a foley room for a movie soundtrack. Love it!Serenity Dub 2.1 p.m.
Genre: Electro-dub
Just as advertised by the name, this one's laid back instrumental dub with all the sharp edges filed off. Compared to the driving beats of Hallucinogen, these guys are sitting in the back seat blowing a spliff. They let the loops play from beat 1 to beat 1000, allowing the electronic and vocal fx drift over the groove like it's a beach day, every day. Good production.The Field , From Here We Go To Sublime
Genre : Lo-fi/Instrumental Electro-pop
As close as you're going to get to remixed Royksopp without the vocals. Love it from beginning to end! Fabulous music and production.Waldeck, Ballroom Stories
Genre: Nu-jazz
If the first track doesn't suck you in 160%, there's something wrong with you. Happy-happy tunes inspired by 1920s jazz grooves. Not a wrong note in the album. Killer production.Toroidh, Segervittring
Genre: Gothic/Dark Ambient/Martial
You know when you go to a museum and you can do a guided audio tour with headphones? Well, this album would be perfect if you're doing a tour of Auschwitz. Brooding strings, explosive slow percussion, hellhound horns, death march snare, pitch-shifted speeches and nightmarish choirs. If Mahler is your bubblegum pop, this'll be right up your alley. Production is top-notch. The mood, unforgivingly bleak.A Challenge of Honour, Monuments
Genre : Martial/Electro-symphonic
A nice dark ambient with lots of flamming toms, minor key synth-strings and King-Lear-important horns. Gack on the amateurish " Polyphonic Spree " yoga-dude vocals and the samples that aren't properly EQ-ed into the mix. Because of that, production is spotty.Beborn Beton, Scythe
Genre: Electro-prog
Trying too hard to be interesting and "deep" by using mismatched fx and synth weirdities over Euro-pop beats. Struck me like poppy Strawbs remixed by a ten year old hitting all the presets on his first Casio.16volt, Fullblackhabit
Genre: Indie Hard Rock
Mostly straight forward rock, but not afraid of a hard funky beat behind Tony Iommi -que guitar and whispery screamed vocals. Shriekback-ish stadium rock with small club dynamics. Great production.Slick Idiot, Xscrewciating
Genre: Dance
Some tracks sound like early Yello remixed with crappy disco/pop vocals. Good teen dance music. Excellent production - but often sounds too slick (read compressed) for it's own good, like it's made exclusively to keep you on the dance floor at 2:00am.Deadbeat, Journeyman's Annual
Genre: Electro-Dub
Dark, low-key dub. The kind of album that you might never notice because it verges on ambient. Great grooves, but somehow it almost seems like it never get's off the ground. Track 8 broke the spell for me: the intrusive vocals just turns into second-rate stoner reggae. But the rest rubbed me all the right ways. Superb production.
June 17, 2007
I've started on a big-time project for an album. So far I've got one finished track and another well on the way. Even though it's an electronic album, I'm taking my inspiration from the pieces that have made me crazy with love of music over the years. All those unclassifiable, genre-defying moments that have ripped ozone holes in my brain for the past four decades. I started out on this project thinking, oh, I'll just put some of my poetry to music. Then I thought, no, screw it. It's doesn't have to be "me"-centric. It doesn't have to be my words - it doesn't even have to have words. It just has to be great. And then I vacillated between the two for weeks. Well, now I'm at the point where I don't care. I'm going to do whatever it takes, whatever is appropriate for each piece. Nora's reaction to the first finished piece: "You're making art here." That, from a long time art critic. What she meant was, it isn't just 'music', a background piece, a dance piece, or anything programmatic or to make money or fame or anything. It's trying to say something artistic - Art for Art's Sake - and not for any other reason. And that's what I'm aiming for. Bombast? Big? Bold? I don't know what to call it. But it ain't a bunch of little jigs.
June 2, 2007
I got to the end of my second Phil Perkins book this week, The Logical Approach to Rock Coordination. By 'getting to the end' I mean, being able to play each exercise flawlessly all the way through. It often took three or four tries for each one, but I've done it! Yeah, yeah, I tell myself, I still have to master these techniques, integrate them into my playing. But man... just being able to do them at all is a major accomplishment for me.
May 20, 2007
Bought a killer good vocal mic, an AKG C2000B and it arrives on Thursday. I'm in the process of building some low-tech baffles out of comstruction styrofoam and mattress cone foam. It's not going to be ideal, but its what I can afford right now. Then it's on to adding acoustic stuff to my recordings. I can finally dig out my Martin acoustic guitar, my old flute, and finally record brushes on my snare. I tell ya, I can't wait.
On my Top 10 list these days, is Tim 'Love' Lee, Red Buddha and still...still... Hallucinogen, In Dub. Those three have got me completely hooked. When I burn out listening to them, it's more Claude Challe, the old DJ Spooky Vs Scanner, Asian Chill, Ear Pleasure, the singularly quirky edIT, Groove Corporation (just 'cause I'm lost in dub these days), and Zentone.
April 14, 2007
My CD, Raving Poets - Remixed, was released last Wednesday at the Kasbar. Man... was I ever happy to get that project out the door. All this time working on it... and now it's done. In the next little while I'll be sending it out to campus radio stations all across Canada.
February 8, 2007
Still listening to Claude Challe. Just got his triple CD "Best of " last week, and loving it. And the new Brazillian Girls. Oh, yes, and lately I can't tstop listening to" Hallucinogen In Dub ". The thing's only got six longish tracks. But man... the groove never stops. Is is techno? Funk? Deep beat Cinematic? Low-Fi Electro dub? Do I care? Nope... not one bit. These guys raise the roof from the first beat to the final one. The last music that put me in such a chair-bopping mood was Tosca's Chocolate Elvis. I listen to In Dub every day, it seems. Hard-rocking, high-spirited, subversive, technically proficient, what more can you ask for?
Also listening to (and can highly recommend), Agent 5.1's album Con Furore; the new Bliss; Pretz, Soundcastles; and everything by Pepe Deluxe and Sandoz.
Just finished my 13th Raving Poets remix. I'm done for a while. Maybe till I get some fresh material/inspiration from the new series, Rapture, which starts in a couple of weeks. Two more to post, though and they're both really good.
October 29, 2006
Great things in music the past few weeks. And I mean, capital G great.
1. Kit lessons. Last week the assignment was on counting. Count everything. And I went to town on it as if there was nothing else worth learning. Did it ever pay off.
2. This week, the lesson is permutations. Start a groove, vary it every four bars in a progressive, tension-building way. I had a lot of trouble the first couple days, was paralysed with frustration at my slow progress. Now I've got it. And I'm completely nuts about this approach.
3. Still ga-ga about Claude Challe. I listen to it non-stop. Listen to nothing else with the same interest. The guy kills me.
4. Got an email from Phil Perkins. THE Phil Perkins, the author of the three drum books I've been studying almost exlusively for the past few years. He just wanted to thank me for my complimentary mention of him in my little blog here. Freakin blew me away. If you're studying drums or percussion, buy his books. It's all in there.October 15, 2006
Much happening with me and music these days. I just finished my seventh Raving Poets remix. I had my first drum lesson with Sandro Dominelli last week. I've stepped up my drum pad practice to a full 60 minutes every noon hour and at least an hour of improv on my kit in the evenings. And I've got a ton of new music to inspire me.
Claude Challe. What the hell? Why haven't I heard of you till now? Just bought "Je Nous Aime" the other day and my god... I'm pretty much crazed over it.
September 17th, 2006
Posted my first AcidPlanet remix last night. It's from a set of Madison Park samples they provide. I added a ton of my own weird stuff, both musical (cymbals, bass, etc) and sound-effect (heart beat, hockey puck hitting glass, water droplets, etc.). Check it out here.
August 10, 2006
I finally got it together to scribble some write-ups today.
Lusine, Serial Hodgepodge
This honey starts off all ambient and quickly drops into a deep Massive Attack kind of groove with treated voice. There is no actual singing on any of the pieces. The album is what I'll call hard easy listening. Lo-fi with solid layering, simplicity of concept but with nimble rhythmic and melodic depth that never stales. Instrumentally, the pieces alternate between ambient electronic and inventive electro-rhythms with subtle synth (no cheese here). Want to listen to something slightly jazzy (sometimes funky) but unintrusive that ain't granola ambience or sci-fi electronic but that doesn't make you want to slit your throat after four bars from infantile tech-no-brainer rhythms? This is your baby. Stars all the way, not a wrong note in the whole thing.
Alif Tree, French Cuisine
I heard maybe a track and a half of this album before I rushed to Amazon.com and ordered it. The first track sounds like a Nina Simone remix, a fitting intro to what is to come. The second track should be in the soundtrack for a French movie where the beautiful ingénue is driving away from a tragic encounter through the rain, dressed the nines, and all for nothing. It friggin kills me, this track. Lush symphonic chords, piano, bass clarinet. Man... throw me into that world and toss away the key. That theme is continued in the third track, symph-pads and drums, but if you're following the story, this one's from the perspective of the gentleman. The fourth track starts with a killer jazz bass-line, joined shortly by piano and grooving drum kit, the singing reminiscent of the Nina Simone-esque track, but much snappier. And on it goes. I kind of found the energy and high-brow groove fading into jazz cliché toward the 3/4 mark of the album, but who cares? The first bunch of tracks are worth twice the price of admission. And the, as some Web reviewer mentioned, the Steve Reich-ish second last track, (the machine-head string plucking / thumb-piano / Tibetan temple bells one), is just magic. Awesome.
Various Artists, 100% Nu Jazz
Quality, just not high quality. If you like all your chill to have the same beat (boom-boom-CHICK-daga-boom-boom-CHICK) then this album's for you. Good guys on the album, DJ Krush, 9 Lazy 9, Jimpsters, just not their best tracks.
Alta Fidelidade, Electro Brazil
Want a party album? This is your baby. And don't think this is all Latin-influenced lounge. Think big band horns, funk guitar, killer bass and plenty of percussive support behind the driving acoustic kit. De-Phazz, Tower of Power, reggae, Carlos Santana, even a little jungle thrown in. Some of the tracks strike me like they could have tried harder to put their own stamp on it. But hey, familiar is good on a dance floor. Can't not love it. Their concerts must have drop sheets for the flinging sweat from the crowd.
Sofian Rouge, Mediterranean Excursion
Yikes, this thing is one of those artsy One-World albums that just make you want to gag at the pubescent New Age sincerity. Hope! Vision! Life! Hurl! Sadly, these guys mean it. Ok, I should shut up now. I completely enjoy the record - as long as I don't think about it too hard. If you like your Sufi with samples, this one's for you.
Sounds From The Ground, Terra Firma
I have a quirk, a flaw regarding albums that sound like they were made in somebody's basement. My regard for the musical competence of the artists involved has nothing to do with this gut reaction. I listen to this stuff all day. I appreciate the groove. I love being sent into a trance as much as the next guy. But I tell you the pieces that stay with me are not the ones in this category. The people I'd recommend "Sounds from the Ground" to are hip coffee shop owners. No lyrics to get in the way, no brass, no excessive samples, no brain-bending poly rhythms. Just a solid groove to happify your day.
Various Artists, Dub Club 2000 + 1 Love
Get down! Man... how down can you get? This anthology makes you want to blow a reefer and limbo low into a deep shag carpet. This compilation is out of Vienna, so think, dub that's been influenced by (or has influenced) bands like Tosca. The deepest groove... You'd have be in a full body cast not move to this one. (I wonder if they have jerk schnitzel over there?)
Urbs, Toujours Le Meme Film
Speaking of music out of Vienna, I gotta mention this one. The way this CD starts off completely sold me on it. The first two tracks have these sort of... heavy fluff elements that say, loud and clear, "I am seriously not taking myself too seriously". This could be the soundtrack to Don Quixote or Gargantua and Pantagruel. Reminds me a bit of Yonderboi's first album, but the artist here is much more driven, much more, um... "progressive", in the art rock sense of the word. This album's eleven tracks seem like one piece - hence the soundtrack association. If you had to take a really long bus ride and had good enough isolation headphones to crank this baby, it would instantly turn the most varied passing scenery into a thematically cohesive unit.
The Jazz Influence
You know, there are a lot of compilations out there that don't deserve to exist. There just isn't enough meat to justify them. "The Jazz Influence" is a far cry from that syndrome. Every track is obviously done by "real" jazz musicians. The CD has been playing in my car for a solid month, still fresh as ever. There are lots of "real" jazz musicians out there who decry the rise of 'non-musicians' pumping out lounge and chill and nujazz fast as their sequencers can crank it. Well, here's news for you guys. A) It's all music and if you don't like it, shut up and go listen to something else. B) When you hear the real deal, done by highly trained artists, the only thing that will need pointing out is that the old "jazz standard" model is now "big skill arcana" - on the same level as classical opera. It ain't bad (in fact, it's really friggin great), it's just old and no longer interesting.
Anyway The Jazz Influence is everything you'd expect from the St. Germaine school of smooth beats. Trancey ostinati, mostly acoustic instrumentation, light on the samples, and well, it's best played loud. The guys in the car next to you, for sure, are gonna go, Fuckin Cool! What is that? (The real reason I keep in my car. Snork-snork.)
May 7, 2006
Been working on Raving Poets remixes the last couple of weeks. Got five tracks down now and can't wait to do more. On some of them I was really light-handed and it worked pretty well. But the whole time I was wishing for a piece or two where I could just cut loose. And man... I got that now. I tell you, I can't wait to post these on the Raving Poets site. It'll be a weekly thing, one track every seven days. And maybe a compilation CD afterward.
Fabric 12 (The Amalgamation Of Soundz) (2003)
Though I'd heard tracks from the Amalgamation of Soundz, (and liked them enough to fork out for a full CD) I'd never heard of the Fabric series - which apparently is up to volume 19 now. Each volume is produced (remixed) by a different artist, the music from the resident DJs at the Fabric club in London. The arc of the 18 tracks on this beast is lush cinematic through lazy lounge pulse and on to (never completely) standard club beats. I'm more drawn to the first half of the album than the second - and it almost seems like the promise of the beginning is never lived up to by the end. But who cares? This whole CD is lightyears better than the truckloads of tedious techno out there. Oh, and the metal CD case in the cardboard sleeve is just too cool. The only problem I have with the CD is, what do I buy now? More AofS or more Fabric series?
Impulsive! - Various Artists (2005)
Sure, after the three great courses of Verve Remixed I'll eat any remixed jazz. But just glancing at the cover of this baby, Verve coulda never existed and I would have snapped this one up. Archie Shepp, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus remixed? I'm there. Call me a crazy technoid, but I'm merciless when it comes to quality and I'd rather hear Horowitz play Beethoven on my kickass stereo than hear Beethoven himself play, live. Yeah, yeah, some of the tracks on the "unmixed" CD in this two CD set are better than the remixes. But holy shit... when the remixes are better, it's like, die and go to heaven time. Tracks 1 and 2 are on an orgasmic up-ramp to the hard bop of Track 3 - which I could listen to on a loop 24/7 till next Tuesday without complaining. Track 4, what the hell? My reaction on first hearing it was, "If somebody told me the remixer had played the original piece backwards and recorded over it, I'd believe 'em." Friggin cool. A couple tracks in the middle are a bit too "Tower of Power" for my taste, but 8 and 9 just redeem everything. When do we get more????
April 8, 2006
On my kit, I'm finally getting to the stage where I can play a very complex beat and transition in and out of it with ease. That's been a goal for months. Sure, I could always sustain a simple beat, but not always a complex one. Now I can play a complex one and start and stop it with whatever bizarre transitions I please. It's a huge deal. All those rudiments are finally paying off. I can sight-read any intermediate snare music and quite a bit of advanced stuff. In my snare book, it's getting to be slim pickins of what I can't play.
What's really amazing to me is how much I have to rely on muscle memory to play difficult stuff. With flute, guitar and piano I would just read and play. With this beast... my god. The injection of a microsecond of conscious thought throws everything out of whack. I have to maintain this total suspension of disbelief (that my arms and legs know what they're doing) and concentrate my full attention on the music - as opposed to my body making it. Friggin cool. You can never ask, How am I doing that? 'Cause I'll screw up. It be like taking my hand out of the puppet for a second to look at it. It just don't work that way. Either you're in it or you're not. You make music or you make confused silence.
March 12, 2006 - ditto
And one more: 30-04
March 12, 2006
Been creating little mini pieces the last week or so. 30 seconds each. Like commercials. Get in, say what you gotta say and get out. Quick and dirty and hugely satisfying. I was really getting bummed that I haven't had (made) time to work on compositions since getting my drumkit. My focus has been getting proficient on that instrument. Now though, I have an outlet, a form, that I can sustain throughout my learning process. Friggin cool.
Anyway, here are the three I've done so far: 30-01 30-02 30-03
Not much processing in any of them and no loops. Just straight off the instruments and hucked on the page.
February 19, 2006
Having a blast learning drums. Huge breakthrough this week in playing double stroke rolls. They were my freakin nemesis for a year after I started on snare technique. It's taken me months to learn fives, sevens, nines and elevens. Not the playing of them so much as the reading of them. Fucking things all looked the same. I had to write in what they were and just read my scribbles if I had any hope of keeping in time. But this week I concentrated on thirteens and nailed them - both in the playing and the reading. And now that I got it, I can't stop playing the exercises that mix them all up - 5s, 7s, 9s, 11s, 13s. I can now play about 3/4 of this book straight through.
Now that I have a kit I can play on all day, I've gotten into this new paradiddle book with a vengeance. The exercises aren't that hard, but holy shit... when you get the technique going on a full kit it sounds like somekind of Acid/Latin/African/funk/jazz thing. It makes everything else sound like child's play. Huge, huge fun.
December 31, 2005
I got my DTX!December 16, 2005
Early/Mid '70s - What thought was great back then
Took me a while to compile this little list today. It's the stuff I listened to between the ages of 14 and 18. Under the heading "Major" is listed albums I couldn't have lived without and that today, for the most part, have stood the test of time. This is the soundtrack of my teen years.
Major
Peter Hammill - The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage
Aphrodite's Child - 666
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
King Crimson - Lizard
Vangelis - Earth
Syrinx - Long Lost Relatives
Perth County Conspiracy - Does Not ExistMinor
Gentle Giant - Acquiring the Taste
Genesis - Foxtrot, Nursery Cryme
Audience - House on a Hill, Lunch
Roy Harper - Lifemask
Van Der Graaf Generator - H to He (Who Am the Only One), Pawn Hearts
What I thought of as great mainstream music
Led Zeppelin - I-IV
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, More, Ummagumma
Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick, Aqualung
Emerson, Lake & Palmer - self-titled, Tarkus
Royksopp - The Understanding (2005)
I've been meaning to pop a mini review of this album on the site for many a week now. When I first bought this thing, I have to admit I didn't get it. It just sounded like so much fluffy Euro-pop and it was hard to take it seriously. Then I got hooked on Track 6, "Beautiful Day Without You". Not long after I became slightly nuts about playing Track 2 whenever I was driving. And then the kicker happened. Track 7. It was Fall-Down-And-Cry-In-A-Corner-For-A-Week time. Holy. Shit. I can't tell you the last time a track hit me so hard or so deeply. It's called "What Else Is There?" and I'm not going to say anything about it till you run out and buy this album for yourselves. Is the rest of the album as good? Even half as good? Man. who cares! For about three weeks there I was swept up in that song's wake. I'd plan out when I could listen to it next. I had to be alone in the car, couldn't be too much traffic, couldn't have too much other crap on my mind. And I'd put in and cringe, thinking, now I've done it, here she comes! And it was shiver time. It was "I can't friggin stand how great this is" time.Is it a context sensitive track? Is it just me? Do you have to listen to the whole album first to "get it"? Hell, I don't know. But someone should give these guys a honkin' big award, Do Not Pass Go, Collect 2 Billion Dollars and Proceed to Every Music Hall of Fame Ever Built. Thank you, Royksopp.
Tosca - Chocolate Elvis Dubs (1999)
This is one of those rare records that, from start to finish, maintains a lush live groove without ever getting tedious and without ever being intrusive. Low-key as it is, every note sounds fresh and rocks harder than a twenty foot stack of joist-rattling house music. If a group of the greatest acid jazz/drum & bass/remixers had to play a three hour live show, what would it sound like in the third hour when things are winding down, people just want to slouch on the sofas and groove rather than dance? That's Chocolate Elvis. If I were rating albums according to how many times they'd bear repetition, this one would be in the Top 5 for sure.October 28 , 2005
Two more tracks laid down this week. "Don't Wake the Baby" and "Fluff & Wax". The former still needs a final vocal track but everything else is done!. And last night I got carried away playing keyboards and lost the thread of what I was doing. (God... I love this keyboard!) So I figured I'd do a completely new and different kids piece. Hence Fluff & Wax. I tell ya, I couldn't stop laughing all the way through editing. It sounds like two instruments with Down Syndrome having a happy little party. Atonal, arhythmic, completely hilarious.
October 20, 2005
Been working on my kids CD lately. Got six tracks done now. Actually, the sixth still needs a final vocal track, but hey, everything else is finished. And by 'everything else' I mean ten tons of tune-smithing. The thing is so much better than I could have ever hoped. It's the Ballerina poem, the second kids poem I wrote and I have to admit, I was deathly afraid of tackling it. I'd pictured harps and little tinkley bells and crap. But no, the final track has everything but harps and bells. I even had Nora sing a bit on it. I've already started on the next track, which should drive just about every parent on the planet to strong drink. But kids'll go gaga for it. The kind of thing a six year old would crank to the max and deafen the dog. I can't wait.September 28, 2005
Ok, today I promised myself I'd have a few things to say about what I actually listen to on a regular basis (as opposed to what I USED to listen to ages ago). So here goes.
Royksopp - Melody AM (2002)
I have no problem declaring this album, unconditionally, a classic. What happy, complex, funky fun this whole CD is! If you like upbeat grooves that don't take themselves too seriously (Koop, 9-Lazy-9, De-Phazz, Tosca, Ursula-1000), you'll love this. They've taken a page from '60s pop, thrown in some lush beats that might have been laid down by Manu Chao (while Yonderboi was visiting the studio) and laid down a batch of sweet tracks that can bear the weight of a ton of replay. Well done, guys.
Xploding Plastix - Amateur Girlfriends Go Proskirt Agents (2001)
Real drums!!! Or should I say, Real Drummer! So many "electronic" albums get tiresome in about 15 seconds because their creators rely (quite deliberately) on one bar loops. Nothing wrong with trance music; just don't pretend it's interesting outside the realm of tech musak. Anyway, "Amateur Girlfriends" has been on my Top 3 groove list for months. Real drums (down to swishy snare brushes), sweeping symphonic themes... In Canada, why can't I get the latest (The Donca Matic Singalongs) from these two musical powerhouses? Do I have to hop a kayak to Norway? What the hell?? Enough jazz to keep the St.Germain fans happy and plenty of edge - so the Fluke and Juno Reactor crowd will want to crank it. If they were playing in my town I'd be first in line for tickets, sit front and center and be in the throes of ecstasy with every groove.
Parov Stellar - Rough Cuts
The best tracks are, hands down, "Psychedelic Jazz" and "Kisskiss". The latter could have been ripped straight from Nicholas Repac's Swing-Swing: low-fi 1920s baby-voiced blues singer, funky beat, addictive as crack. Psychedelic Jazz is an animal all to itself. One of the best modern pieces for a quiet moment that I've heard in a long while. Those two tracks were worth the import price, big time. On the downside, I found my attention drifting during the rest of the album. I spent waaay too many hours listening to the Lounge on Radio Free Virgin, and too many tracks on Rough Cuts hit me as compitent but... uh... unrememberable. Excellent dinner music, rather than something you'd pay to enjoy at a concert.
Red Snapper / Red Snapper (2003)
This one goes in the bag with Xploding Plastix. Real drums and echee-karumba, does this guy know how to play 'em. Horns to die for. Killer orchestration that has "Carefully Composed!" sprayed on from one end of the CD to the other. You like bass? This'll have your woofers slamming you into the couch cushions. Beats that make you want to get out the vacuum just so you can dance with it? You betcha.September 19, 2005
Ok, so I'm on a retro kick today. So shoot me.
Aphrodite's Child - 666
Around 1972, a friend came back from a holiday in Italy with tales of the popularity of this singer, Demis Roussos, who apparently had black hair down to his ass and performed in a floor length black cloak. Sounded cool, so next time I was at Opus 69 (the only record store in E-town that sold imports), I asked about it. The guy had a demo copy of a double album behind the counter with this singer on it. "Aphrodite's Child - 666". I gave a few tracks a listen and couldn't believe my ears. I pleaded and begged and though he wanted it for the store, he let me buy it. Holy shit... it changed my idea of what music could be. It was the Gothic Rock Art Holy Grail that Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator were trying to attain and all fell short of. I tell you, this thing rocked my world. Sad to say it's a bit dated these days, but that isn't to say someone couldn't take the non-dated 90% and redo it with modern instrumentation.
Vangelis was the mastermind behind this masterpiece and he's been hard pressed to write anything as good since. ("Earth" comes close, but nothing else is even in the ballpark. Trust me, I kept buying and hoping for two damn decades.)
Where do I start trying to talk about this thing? "The Wedding of the Lamb", "The Four Horsemen", "Altamont", the Infinity track... it just doesn't stop. Iconic greatness in every note. And then... holy shit... he ends it up with the greatest rock art orchestral track of all time: "All the Seats Were Occupied". The thing was so much larger than my little 15 year old brain I think I grew an extra lobe just to take it all in.
Audience - House on a Hill
The lead singer made this album for me. The guy's name is Howard Werth, and he's got one of those killer rock voices that's like a hard edged melding of Robert Plant and the lead singer for Alabama 3 (the guys who did the theme song for The Sopranos). The title track is twice as good as anything else on the LP, blending Ian Anderson-type flute, David Jackson-like sax and a Southern blues edge that's almost as dark as the first Black Sabbath. Well, maybe that's overstating it a bit. But back when the hardest folk was Jethro Tull and Roy Harper, this was a great addition. Oh, yeah, and the album cover alone is worth the price of admission.
Perth County Conspiracy - Does Not Exist
The hippie album to end all hippie albums. There are tracks on here that were burned into my brain with a cattle brand in 1970 and they're still smoking. Cedric Smith has such a smooth, solid voice he could melt the gold fillings right out of your head. Anthemic folk tunes, Dylan Thomas, great guitar playing, sound effects and general goofiness. What would these guys have done if they weren't stoned? Or did the whole thing come about because they were stoned? Don't care. A Canadian classic that in one effortless track makes Leonard Cohen's entire opera seem like too much work. "The goddess Fantasia / Bore a child of whimsy..."Update (August 10, 2008)
If anyone happens to know where I can get hold of the chords for Perth County Conspiracy - Does Not Exist, email me.
August 29, 2005
Well, Pete Brown and Piblokto! turned out to be a near-total bust. What saved it is, a) it's title (Things May Come and Things May Go But the Art School Dance Goes On Forever) b) the sentimental fact that it's the first time I heard talking drums and c) the vigorous reinforcement it gives to the idea that we have far better production values now, which makes excellent musicians try that much harder to sound excellent (because you can hear every little mistake). On the third or fourth note of the first song on this album, you hear a rhythmic blunder. That told me everything I needed to know before going any further. Were they stoned when they wrote the songs? Likely. Were they stoned when they recorded the album? Had to be. I didn't have very high expectations for this thing, but wow... it's far worse than I remembered it was.August 7, 2005
Got an MP3 player a couple of weeks ago - before holidays. I think I would have gone completely nuts without it on the plane. Really got into a couple of tracks from The Future Sounds of Jazz Vol.10: Playboy by Hot Chip and First Note.I think I'm obsessing about The Avalanches. It's been a few months now and I can't not play it every day. Nothing else compares to the sweeping orchestral scope of it. I know it's old, but holy shit... so's Tchaikovsky. So's J.S.Bach. The last time something hit me so profoundly was Bach's cello sonatas. And Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony. I just figure I've got a lot to learn from the Avalanches CD and not stress about it.
Was trying to remember an LP I owned when I was a teenager. Joe something-or-other and Pibloco or Pablico. I searched online umpteen times trying various spellings and finally posted a message in a '70s music newsgroup the other day. Some guy responded within a couple of hours. It's Pete Brown & Piblokto! as it turns out. I hopped right to Amazon and ordered it just out of sheer nostalgia. Compared to King Crimson and Genesis and Aphrodite's Child, it's poor man's progressive rock. But I don't care. I'm on a mission to recollect all my old music.
Finally got coated skins for my Slingerland kit yesterday, the snare and two small toms. Holy crap... does it ever sound good with brushes.
Been playing lots on my new Motif ES. The other day I recorded a ton of instrumental variations of the same melody and tried stringing them together in Acid. Completely whacked ambition. The thing to do is create patterns on the keyboard, tweak them with quantization and get the dang machine to play the different variations when I've got a metronome behind me. It wasn't a complete failure. I'll get a song out of it eventually. But that day has to be all written off as practice.
June 27, 2005
Meat Beat Manifesto - At the Center (2005)
Heard his one in a listening booth, but didn't buy it. Worth the bucks if you like instrumental slammin jazz grooves. Tracks like "Want Ads One" and "..Two" are like garage (jazz) band versions of something Laurie Anderson might have done: a Dr. Sbaitso-type voice reading unsettling random want ads over a repetitive beat. If you had to place the tunes in a cinematic or programmatic context, you'd quickly slot it into a Miami Vice scene (where Tubbs & Crockett are tailing a suspect), the flute, brass and piano could be from some lonely-assed Bar Fly scene, and the samples ripped off the backing track (think police scanner chatter) of Rescue 911. Clearly the drummer is the band leader here. Why didn't I buy it? The tunes are hauntingly still with me, but holy god... nothing rose above the emotional level of half-drunk greasy-street 3:00-in-the-morning bleak. I think a few - ahem - dynamics would be in order.June 20, 2005
Bought the drum kit. Yikes, can I ever make a racket. The cymbals are ancient, and I'm not keen on the retro pedals. Already there are major complaints about the noise in the house. Can't wait to get the Yamaha DTXtreme.June 19, 2005
Gonna go and check out an acoustic drumkit this evening. Will probably buy it. It's a 1971 Slingerland, varnished maple. Full kit: snare, 3 toms, bass, hi-hat, ride, and two crashes. I wasn't planning on buying an acoustic kit, but this offer is just too good to pass up.
For the past couple of months I'm been religiously practicing from the book, "The Logical Approach to Snare Drum, Volume #2". This book in unbelievable. I spend my lunchhours doing the exercises just slapping on my lap, and in the evening with sticks on a practice pad. I think I've learned more from this one book than every other thing I've done in the past two years, including lessons.
The other I've been going at for the past couple of weeks is called, "1001 Drum Grooves". Most of it is basic snare, bass and hi-hat exercises. Spectacularly good for me. I can play 60 exercises in a row before I can't hold the sticks anymore and have to take a rest and stretch. Holy god... am I ever learning a lot. Have just started on the Funk/Rock section am just squirrelly about getting these down. The straight rock grooves just seem like exercises in endurance. The funk ones are the serious coordination exercises.
Verve Remixed 3 (2005)
God... sign me up for every album these guys put together. Some of it is so loud you can't play it often (Sing-Sing-Sing, Fever). But when I'm in the mood... whoa. A friggin outstanding anthology, head and shouders above most of the dreck out there. The Hugh Masekela track is just outstanding; electric and electronic as all get out, but wow, they've retained a real raw African flavor that makes it completely organic.June 17, 2005
De-Phazz - Natural Fake (2005)
My god... what happened to the good old "Death by Chocolate Days" (2001) and "Plastic Love Memory" (2002) days? I was dying to listen to this on the way home from the store. But I got 5 tracks into it and had to stop it. For fuck sakes, is that the best you can do? Took me days to get over my disappointment and listen to the rest of it. Found two good tracks: #9 and #15. (What is it with bands and track #9? I must have six CDs with track #9 being head and shoulder above the rest.) The remaining tracks I will never waste my time on again. The De-Phazz machine on autopilot.Those two tracks though... wow. Turns out they're mostly instrumental. I don't think it says anything about my taste (see Verve Remixed 3 above). I've now listened to the whole album a second time and it's just confirmed what I said before. Blah. Track #9 has this sound - like a growly voice behind everything else - that just kills me. Track #15, man... it has sampled vocals on it... rocks the house.
Black Hawk Down [soundtrack] (2002)
Loaned a friend this honey. As soon as I heard him say, "getting into Arabic music these days", that was it. I had to put this in his hands. After opera, this is the first album Nora reaches for. Hans Zimmer (check out his music on Batman Begins) really showed his colors on this one. It's orchestral/rock/Arabic with Rachid Taha's best track on it to boot. Think Afro-Celt Sound system with an horrific story to tell. A serious musical journey.
Future Sounds of Jazz, Vol.10 (2005)
Went to HMV to buy this baby and it could only be special ordered on LP. What the hell?
The Avalanches - Since I Left You (2001)
This is a one of kind animal. Talk about a wall of noise... It's as if it's a live album with twenty musicians and hundreds of people dancing and making their own racket. One BIG party. How can such blatant cacophony give me the warm fuzzies? What the hell? This is one party I wouldn't want to miss. On my Top Five list for months.OK, I can't leave this album alone. I'm trying hard to play other things, but holy shit... I listened to it twice today and it just improves every time. In the Top Three now. Think of this album as yanking the ribbons out three thousand cassette tapes and making the most gloriously delightful rats nest ever assembled. This is why record companies have to give up on expensive licences for sample artists. This is why the media has to go give it's hydra heads a shake and stop stomping guy's who want to snip piece of track here and there. OK, enough ranting. "Since I Left You" is a perfect example of the whole exceeding the sum of its parts. And trust me, there are a hell of a lot of parts, woven into an endless series of take-no-prisoners melodies. How'd they do this? Decide from the outset that every little noise had to have a tune? In tune? I tell you if this were pictures at an exhibition, there'd be a few Jackson Pollocks, not a little Pop Art and just to pull your guts in some unexpected directions, a little side gallery of Diane Arbus.
Dzihan & Kamien - Freaks & Icons (2000)
Been addicted to their Gran Riserva (2002) for many a week. If it were vinyl I'd have worn a hole in it by now. This one, Freaks & Icons, shows their potential, but Gran Riserva is that potential realized. Smatterings of Bollywood (tablas, voice, sitar, etc) but solid beats all the way. F&I starts with two tracks with the same beat. Snore. But it amps up later on. Gotta give it some more time, but it will never make my Top 20.
Banabila - Voiznoiz 3 (2002)
Michel Banabila. Yeah. Simple, straight forward grooves. Whoever does the horns, my god... the soul of subtlety. As if Ambient-era Brian Eno got bitten by a jazz spider.
Klaus Schulze - Body Love II (1977)
Yeah, yeah... it's really friggin old. But I recently rediscovered it when I got my old turntable hooked up. Jesu Murphy, the guy's a virtuoso on that old monophonic moog. What is this anyway? A porn soundtrack? I, for one, don't care. Well done. Worth your twenty bucks just to see how they did it (well) back in the '70s.
Syrinx - Long Lost Relatives (1971)
While I'm on the vintage kick, here's another favorite LP. I bought this for myself for Christmas (along with Led Zeppelin IV) when I was (gulp) 14. Holy shit, does this thing ever age well. Get this: synth, sax, congas and fairly large chamber orchestra. And nary an art rock cliché in sight. The only glaring anomaly on the LP is Tillicum, the theme song for the TV show, Here Come the '70s. The rest is a truly great 20th Century composition that would please any Moondog-/Orff- classical beat loving audiophile. Needless to say, every note is burned into my little brain - and I'm happy to give it the space.The album still hasn't been released on CD. (Is that criminal, or what?) If you'd like to lobby for it's re-release please send a note off to general_inquiries@truenorthrecords.com . Give 'em heck! Sob, slobber and beg! The crown jewels of 20th Century Canadian Electronica are lying in a vault, covered in dust. What the hell?
Nicolas Repac - Swing-Swing (2004)
This thing never leaves my car. Top 3 for sure. If you liked Moby's Play, this'll knock you on your ass and blare a trombone in your face. I will buy anything this guy builds from now till I die.
