Chopping up the Beatles is really playing with fire, copyright-wise. It’s powerful source material, of course, so I’m glad he went for it. But you know, there’s a reason this stuff was so hard to find for a while.
An Elephant Six band, the Minders were very much, uh, an Elephant Six band. I mean, you can hear them. They were pretty good at it, but it’s kind of…I guess I’d rather just listen to the Kinks instead?
[Read More]I dunno, the vocals on this track are really amusing me tonight. Something about the cadence here is extra ridiculous.
Negativland, in their roles as cultural and social critics, were usually on their strongest footing when they took aim at consumerism. They would always have such rich vocal samples to draw from, and their pointed sarcasm always landed well. And it’s not like it’s super easy to nail this target. Yes, consumer culture in America is a giant blimp, but criticism can come across a smug or facile here because it is such a easy path. Negativland succeed because they mix the absurd in, and they also let our consumer culture speak for itself. The most powerful criticism can be just a simple mirror.
[Read More]This is from Beat Konducta, Volume 1 & 2: Movie Scenes, a record intended as a soundtrack to a non-existant movie as well as a companion piece to J Dilla’s revered Donuts. The thing that makes it a little different from Madlib’s usual work is that there are a lot of vocal samples, helping give it a little more of that cinematic feel. Among Madlib’s instrumental work, it’s not my favorite, but everything he does is interesting.
[Read More]An outlier on the one and only Germs LP, (GI), this is a live track that is triple the length of anything else on the record. A loose wander of a song, it’s all sneer and skronk, without a whole lot of direction. But the Germs were never really about having a point, so it fits in just fine.
It’s impossible to not nod your head along here. I tried, I’ve done the science.
[Read More]I sometimes find screamo to be a little bit tiring. Musically, it’s my jam, but the vocals wear me out sometimes. This seems like a stupid thing for someone who listens to as much metal with vocals that sounds like someone caught something important in a home appliance. But I am very stupid, so here we are.
You know, if Luscious Jackson had made this record another fifteen years later, I’ll bet they would have found a much bigger audience. It sounds pretty ahead of its time, and I’m not sure people in 1994 really knew what to make of it.
[Read More]There’s something so grandiose about Lupe Fiasco’s stuff. The beats are so layered, and they’re structured in a way to feel really huge, and the production of the rest of the track reinforces that massive impression.
A Jason Loewenstein song from Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock, which is a comp of tracks from a couple import EPs. Like a lot of material from them at this time, it’s a schizophrenic record, but that’s also part of the appeal of the band. Tracks like this threw the tender material into even sharper relief.
[Read More]I wonder how many ska-punk bands put out one record in 1997 and were never heard from again? I’m sure there have been comparable fads in music, but it’s hard for me to think of something quite comparable in my lifetime, where a style peaked so hard and petered out so quickly. Grunge wasn’t the same - the peak lasted longer, and a number of the grunge bands continued being popular even post-peak (like Pearl Jam), not to mention important bands still being revered today (such as Nirvana).
[Read More]Foetus released live albums pretty often, which were usually pretty good. The live show was often more direct and noisier, driven by having a live band making a racket. So it’s not just a re-hash of the album tracks, making them good listens if you like Foetus. This is from Boil, and the track is originally from Hole.
I got totally lost in the rhymes in the first verse.
[Read More]Another month in the books! Still hanging in there on the daily grind, but it’s definitely been a little more wobbly.
Like clockwork, Leprous puts out a record every other year, and with each passing album, they just get more and more theatrical. Is this even metal any more? I don’t think so! This is some serious theatre kid rock at this point. Doesn’t stop me from buying each of these records, mind you.
[Read More]That Total Age was more towards the industrial end of industrial dance, with more clanking machines in the sound, and Showtime found them pushing a little more melody in things and varying their arrangements more. This comes from the album in-between, Belief, where they kind of blended those two approaches, and arguably made their more interesting record. There’s a risk in industrial dance in ending up in parody, but this album is so direct in its intention that it feels pretty good.
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