I wonder what the Junior Allstars sound like?
I think last time, we talked about ambient, and how it doesn’t always work that well for me. Well, let’s see if anything has changed, because we have ten minutes of it to listen to together! I’ll see you on the other side, if I’m still awake.
What’s the opposite of ambient? Anyway, I’m awake now!
[Read More]Yazz Ahmed is a jazz trumpeter and I have two albums from her that I really like. Wish I could describe them, but you know, I don’t know shit about jazz.
This is a great example of the unpredictability of Death Grips. Nothing about this song really makes sense, but it’s all intentional and hits the effect they wanted to achieve. That is, disorientation.
[Read More]You know what? We’re trying it again today!
Better! WE DID IT, FOLKS
Long forgotten Bay Area punk band, they put out a couple albums in the early 90s and then disappeared. I’d characterize their sound as, uh, early 90s Bay Area punk. It’s fine, I listened to a ton of these bands at this time and a lot of them were pretty undifferentiated. This band included.
[Read More]With Crack The Skye, Mastodon had kind of reached the end of an exploration, into very prog-y songwriting. In a lot of ways, it mirrored where Metallica had reached with …And Justice For All, and with both bands, the next album represented a real break in style. In Metallica’s case, it was driven by tragedy, with Cliff Burton’s tragic death. In Mastodon’s case, it seemed to be driven by just a desire to move in a new direction. The Hunter, the album in question, is not their best work. It’s still very good, but I personally find the epic stuff from their previous albums more engaging. It’s not until Emperor of Sand that I’m not back fully on board.
[Read More]Yo La Tengo Is Murdering The Classics is a compilation of Yo La Tengo’s fundraising appearances for WFMU where the band plays whatever songs are requested. You can usually tell when it’s a song they’re more familiar with than others, because they can usually muster more energy in the performance, although they’re game for whatever. Here, they put in a nice run on the Stooges classic.
[Read More]While it wasn’t really their debut album, Do You Want More?!!!??! feels like it SHOULD be their debut album. Organix feels more like a practice run or a demo, a band trying to find its voice, and several of its songs appear on the next album in re-worked forms. Anyway, this is the first full song on Do You Want More, and it really sets the template for the album and indeed their first couple albums, with the jazzy groove of the band revolving around Scott Storch’s keyboards and ?uestlove’s drums. I think Black Thought is better on the subsequent albums, but he’s certainly good on this record. Basically, this is where to start with the Roots in exploring their early career.
[Read More]From the double album The Powers That B, as with most things Death Grips, this is pretty singular. It’s really unclear what you’d call this, other than experimental. Maybe Dadaist?
This comes from Play Cell, a pop-punk album on Lookout distinguishable primarily for the rarity of a female singer in a scene where you didn’t find very many of them. It’s a decent album, but not great, and somehow I ended up with four albums from them.
[Read More]I think this is my longest writeup yet. Sorry about that! Here’s the music for today.
During the 90s, there was a gold rush as major labels were suddenly hunting down every underground rock act they could find and trying to sign them to contracts. The major labels figured they could all find the next Nirvana or Green Day, somewhere, and the upside for the major label was obvious. Pop punk, in particular, was a hot sector after Dookie sold a billion records.
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