21 Monday May 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
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Dark Sky’s Black Rainbows EP was released on March 26th of this year, and the last track of the release (“Totem”) has become one of my favorite EDM songs of the year. If you enjoy the track I recommend grabbing the whole release. Check “Totem” out below!
16 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Review
(Housekeeping note: It had been a while since I visited any of the pages on this blog so I went through and updated all of them yesterday evening. The Mass Transit page in particular got fleshed out a bit more)
I haven’t done an in-depth review of an album in quite so time so I decided to kill some time this afternoon by revisiting and old favorite of mine and trying to figure out what exactly I found so appealing about the album. I always find it useful to analyze the music I like in order to learn how to write better compositions myself.
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The Fall of Troy – “Doppelgänger” (2005)
Album art
Doppelgänger could not be a more apt title for this album, for the sound of the album is very much caught in a schizophrenic identity crisis. Fall of Troy draws upon a diverse set of influences for their sound, and it is the constant battle between these disparate styles that gives them their unique sound.
The trio is unquestionably talented when it comes to the playing of their instruments, an incredible feat considering their young age at the time of the recording. They play with a finesse one would expect of individuals twice their age. However, this leads to one of the most noticeable contradictions of this release; the conflict between the musical maturity and the adolescent themes of the lyrics. Instead of cheapening the album, as one might expect, the raw emotion of the lyrics serves to humanize the calculated and precise compositions. For example, after an exhilarating math rock-esque guitar solo in “Act One, Scene One”, the song explodes in energy as frontman Thomas Erak screams “Lock the doors, turn off the lights/Remove all your clothes!” Instead of working against each other, these disparate elements enhance each other, with the energetic and youthful lyrics giving meaning to the impressive musical fireworks.
The other contradiction that is most noticeable is the disconnect between the abrasive and experimental post-hardcore sections and the soaring, poppy melodies. Erak switches between Fall Out Boy inspired vocal melodies and harsh screams in the same verse, while the music can flip between dissonant guitar-led chaos and anthemic choruses on a dime (such as in the excellent single, “F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.” ) As with the music/lyric dichotomy, these seemingly disparate styles combine to create a greater whole and serve to add a sense of excitement to the album; one can never be sure in which direction the band will take a song, but it’s guaranteed to be entertaining either way.
A live show
Standard compositional structure only serves to reign in Fall of Troy’s creativity, and the album’s best moments are those when the band lets their musical train of thoughts get the best of them, such as “Mouths Like Sidewinder Missiles,” which has an entirely instrumental second half featuring intense post-hardcore riffing and guitar hero solos. The following song, “The Ho[ ]y Tape…” adopts a similar ethos and lets the music do the talking, leaving the lyrical sections as a mere afterthought.
Like all bands that experiment, sometimes the band comes up short. “Laces Out, Dan!” may be the worst offender, as it heavily features an uninspired ‘grinding’ riff and some noticeably bad singing from Erak (“do you think I’m joking?”). When the pieces fit though, such as on album highlight “Whacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man’s Bones,” Fall of Troy produces some of the most exciting post-hardcore since the genre’s glory days of At the Drive-In and Refused.
In retrospect, the genius of Doppelgänger is something of a flash in the pan; never to be recreated. Following albums saw the band gradually abandoning their post-hardcore roots in favor of a poppier sound. They still had their moments, but the weird dichotomies of this release were left behind. It’s a shame to see a band peak so early in their career, but we should be thankful that we have this album to remember them by.
15 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
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It entirely slipped my mind to post one of these yesterday. Oops!
Conspirator had a reboot last year, so to speak, when they added a guitarist to their line-up. Since then they’ve been touring steadily and building buzz. Their shows are fun and intense; I caught them last summer in Asbury Park, and it was an exciting two hour dance party. I highly recommend catching a show if you can! They also released a live album a month ago which fans of jamtronica should definitely pick up. Here’s a great video of one of their shows from this year.
10 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Longitudinal Expanse, Tinnitus Records
As I have mentioned a few times here, my friend Charlie and I have started our own DIY label based out of his garage. It has been a learning process; finding places to order cassette boxes and labels from, learning how to use his old tape deck to dub blank tapes, setting up websites and webstores, all in about a month’s time. We launched the store last Monday and have plenty of tapes ready to ship out: just getting this far feels like an accomplishment and the future is wide open. We’ll be looking to expand our roster and release more music as the summer continues, but for now I’ll discuss the two releases we have launched with.
Longitudinal Expanse – Selected Works
Genre: Experimental Rock/Jam Band
Longitudinal Expanse was started by Charlie and I in the summer of 2010 as a ‘jam collective.’ No music has been written for the project, and the focus is on super-extended group improvisation. The project has featured a revolving cast of musicians instead of a steady line-up, with Charlie being the only consistent member. Since I moved to Portland for college Charlie has taken the role of ‘curator,’ so to speak. Last summer we recorded several jam sessions with the line-up featured on this release, and this was the last such session with that line-up before we went our separate ways for the school year.
While we have released digital, un-edited versions of most of the Longitudinal Expanse sessions (totaling over 30 at this point), Selected Works is the first physical release from the collective. The hour plus jam session recorded on August 18th, 2011 has been edited by me to a full-length 43 minute album for this release, highlighting what I found to be the most interesting parts of the recording.
Majorana is the first release from drone/doom duo Dorothea, an international collaboration that spans thousands of miles. One member hails from the east coast of the United States while the other resides on the west coast of Norway. Over the course of a half hour, the band expertly layers bass drones, vocal effects, and even a saxophone over a steady, plodding drum beat. Fans of Jesu, Boris, Sunn O))), and other contemporary drone artists will find a lot to like on this release.
We’re proud to be the first label to release their material on a physical format, and each copy sold is hand numbered by yours truly. The group was only founded a few short months ago, so it will be quite interesting to see where the duo goes from here!
We encourage listeners to share the music with friends both online and off. Small labels like this will live and die by word of mouth, and in our eyes file sharing is nothing more than free publicity. So spread the love! An easy (and free) way to help us out is to “like” our page on Facebook (link below). I’ll post here (as well as our homepage) when we have a new release in the pipeline. If you’re a musician, especially one residing locally in Connecticut, and would like to release your music through us feel free to contact me here, our Facebook page, or email us at tinnitusrecords [at] gmail [dot] com. We give half the purchase price of our products directly back to the artists.
07 Monday May 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
I’ve been sorely neglecting this blog for the past week or so despite having a lot of free time on my hands. Sorry! If there is one thing I have been doing a lot of it has been practicing and writing; at this point I have 10 songs written for Mass Transit (in varying degrees of completeness) and I’m contemplating a black metal side project. It’s only a matter of weeks until the band will be together and practicing, which I’m very excited for.
Tinnitus Records also launched last week! I’ll write a more thorough post about the releases we have for sale, but for now you can check out the website here: Tinnitus Records.
Today I’m sharing “Hope” from one of the three albums Boris released in 2011, New Album. While both Heavy Rocks (2011) and Attention Please have some great cuts, New Album is the one from last year that I find myself returning to the most. Enjoy!
30 Monday Apr 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
I tried…really tried…to have a video up this weekend, but my computer’s webcam is having awful video/audio syncing issues for no apparent reason. It worked for videos in the past, but now the audio and video keep becoming unsynced with each other in awful and distracting ways. Since I currently have no access to any other video camera I had no choice but to give up after several frustrating attempts. I’ll look into it more this week and see if I can’t figure out the issue.
For this Monday’s groove I have decided to share the opening track of the Disco Biscuit’s latest studio album, Otherwise Law Abiding Citizen. Like most jam bands I mostly listen to their live shows when I’m in the mood for them, but out of the few studio albums I have listened to from them, this is probably my favorite. “Great Abyss” is ten minutes of jamtronica goodness that definitely does a good job of capturing their live sound. Enjoy!
24 Tuesday Apr 2012
Posted in Uncategorized
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In just a little over a month, fans from all over the east coast are going to flock towards the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts to celebrate the beginning of Phish’s 2012 summer tour. Due to the band’s (very) abbreviated touring schedule this year, each show is going to carry a lot of weight. 2011 marked the culmination of everything the band had been working towards since the reunion, which leaves expectations high. Will the band continue on the musical progress made last year? It’s the question on everyone’s mind. Here’s my personal wishlist:
1. Continue Exploring the “Storage Jamming” Style
Phish has always been known for “eras” of jamming. During the early 90′s they honed their skills by practicing a tension/release style of improvisation. The mid 90′s was all about crazy psychedelia, and in the late 90′s the band completely reinvented themselves with the emergence of “pornofunk” and ambient soundscapes. While the band has been borrowing from each era of their sound since the reunion, until last year they hadn’t really found a new musical path to explore.
The now-famous "Storage Jam"
That all changed last year at Super Ball IX, the mid-summer festival that separated the first and second legs of their summer tour. The band played a surprise late-night set (after playing three earlier in the evening) in an opaque ‘self-storage USA’ building that fans had been trying to figure out all weekend. The music was highly experimental and entirely improvisational; while the band has incorporated ‘ambient’ jamming in their arsenal for sometime, the storage jam took this idea to the next level. At times highly dissonant and abrasive, it was a challenging experiment for the both the band and the audience.
The impact of the experiment on their music was almost immediate, and fans have pointed to several jams since that festival as belonging to a new style of improvisation dubbed “storage jamming.” The very first show the band played after the festival showed the band jumping headfirst into this new style in a twenty minute rendition of “Rock and Roll” that many believe to be one of the finest moments of the summer tour. The style hasn’t gone away either, several highlights from the New Year’s Eve run have been attributed to this style as well (the surprise jam out of “Cities” during the first set of the run, the breathtaking “Piper” on 12/30, and the noisy, abrasive “Light” from 12/31).
This wish is simple; I hope the band keeps exploring this style. So far it has resulted in a number of gems, and I believe it will produce many more if the members of the group are willing to return to that self-storage building during the course of the tour.
2. Trey Stepping Out of the Spotlight More Often
Trey Anastasio is a guitarist of virtuosic ability. He can turn any jam into a face-melting solo. He does not need to prove this to anyone. Phish is usually at their finest when they focus on group improvisation instead of shining the spotlight on one individual, and unfortunately, these four-part musical conversations are not as common as they once were. I don’t mean this as a dig against Trey, he has led many jams to greatness. However, I do think he should practice “losing control” this tour and let the music guide his playing more often (instead of the other way around).
3. New Songs
It has been a while since the band has introduced a batch of new songs into their repertoire. Summer 2009 showed the band gradually introducing all of the songs from Joy into their live performances, but since then, the usually prolific band has been unusually quiet on the songwriting front. Beside for a handful of originals that were only played a few times, the only song the band has introduced recently and incorporated heavily has been the fast-favorite “Steam,” which was introduced early in the summer last year and quickly amassed buzz among the fan-base as a potential new ‘jam vehicle.’ It has been been incorporated into a regular rotation since, and even formed the basis of the New Year’s gag on 12/31.
The NYE posters were a not-so-subtle reference to the new song
Everyone is looking forward to what the band does with the song in the year to come, but it would be nice to see some new material as well. Exploring new songs and figuring out how to incorporate them into their live shows has always been an impetus for creativity for the band.
That’s all for now! I’m personally very optimistic about the upcoming tour, each summer tour since the reunion has been better than the last, and I have no doubt that trend will continue. And at the end of the day, as entertaining as it is to discuss the band, I think it’s important for the fanbsae to keep things in persepctive and to just have fun. That’s why we all started going to shows in the first place.
See you all at the DCU Center on June 7th and 8th for the opening-of-tour festivities!
23 Monday Apr 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
Australia is not exactly the first country to come to mind when discussing influential music scenes, but Karnivool’s debut album is a fantastic ‘alternative metal’ release that strongly echoes Tool’s style (though without as much progressive indulgence). If you enjoy the song below I would strongly recommending giving the whole release, Themata, a listen!
21 Saturday Apr 2012
Posted in Longitudinal Expanse, Tinnitus Records
I had a pretty cool video on deck to share this weekend but unfortunately I had been having some audio issues with my laptop so I had to leave it with the kind folks at the Apple Store on Friday to get it repaired. I forgot to copy over the data before I took it in so I won’t be able to post it until next week. Sorry!
So instead of posting a weekly video I would like to take the time to introduce my readers to a cool project I have been working on with a good friend of mine since I returned back to Connecticut a few weeks ago. The two of us had discussed starting our own “DIY” label to release our music on, and it’s a project we decided to take seriously. There’s not really any step-by-step guide for this sort of thing, so we have just been taking it one step at a time and figuring it out as we go.
Cassettes are currently having a revival similar to the one vinyl had a few years ago (though not quite as large due to the format’s deficiencies). The benefit of cassettes, of course, is the ease with which they can be made. Anyone who has a two-head tape deck can dub their own tapes, and I found a good source for empty cassette boxes/inserts/etc. My friend, Charlie, also happened to have a bunch of empty cassettes laying around. The logical approach (and cheapest) was therefore to use that format for our first releases. We’re not opposed to branching out to other formats at some point in the future, but it was certainly the easiest way to start.
Once the logistics fell into place and we realized this was something we could actually do, everything started to fall into place quickly. We’re working on a website, which I will share the link to once it has been finished. We decided to use Big Cartel for our webstore, so that we wouldn’t have to deal with finances directly. The shop there is mostly finished, and we have a couple releases ready to be dubbed onto tape. I am therefore proud to announce that TINNITUS RECORDS will be open for business on MAY 1st!
Our first two releases will be Dorothea by Majorana and Selected Works by Longitudinal Expanse. Majorana is a “psychedelic drone doom” collaboration between an east coast musician and a musician from Norway. Longitudinal Expanse is an experimental jam collective organized by Charlie, and this particular release features the two of us as well as an accomplished drummer who we are lucky to be friends with. I’ll post more information on the releases as the date draws closer, but for now you can stream (and download) the entire Dorothea release for free on Bandcamp. Just follow the link below!
Also, you can “like” us on Facebook if you would like to stay up to date on our latest news. Just click here: —>LINK<—.
We’re very much taking this one step at a time and don’t have many plans beyond the immediate future, but we’re willing to devote significant amount of time to this project and hopefully we’ll have many more releases out by the end of the summer, both by projects we are involved in as well as from artists too.
16 Monday Apr 2012
Posted in Monday Groove
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First Aid Kit is a Swedish indie folk duo that I wanted to highlight in my “Favorites of 2012″ post that I did last week, but the post was already running long after just talking about three releases so I decided to highlight it some other time. This is the second track from their most recent release, The Lion’s Roar, titled “Emmylou.”
Enjoy!
