Welcome to my side of the 'net. I ruminate over music, books, movies, places, or people that have somehow made me what I am or continue to influence me to this day. I usually post links to mp3s of songs I find interesting.
ATTENTION:
The mp3s linked to this site are for evaluation and sample purposes only. The files are only hosted temporarily, so if they're unavailable, it's gone for good. If possible, some of these links are sourced back to the musicians's official website. Please make sure to support the musicians featured herein by buying their records, going to their shows, and purchasing their merch.
Explosions In The Sky have come to the forefront of the post-rock genre. Along with bands like Godspeed, You Black Emperor, Kinski, and Mono (as well a legion of others), these outfits have breathed new life into modern music by mixing the sensibilities of crafting soundtrack music, unconventional arrangements, and lots of mood with the raw power of guitar-based rock. These bands blaze the trail and are doing what their progressive rock forebears were doing back in the '70s.
If you're interested in checking out what kind of intensity this band brings, especially in a live setting, you can start with this bootleg captured last summer at Central Park in New York. Note: this is a huge file size. If you want to pick up individual tracks to peruse, you can proceed here to download.
James Murphy a.k.a. LCD Soundsystem is giving away the latest single Bye Bye Bayou legally. Here's the catch: once 20,000 downloads are reached, the deal is off.
Proceed to the link above to get in the queue for the price of an email address.
Finally, the latest Flight Of The Conchords album I Told You I Was Freaky arrived in stores yesterday. If you followed this season's HBO series, you would've heard pretty much every song included in this collection. I did notice that most of the songs are heavier on synths and electronic percussion. IMO, this is a great change from the acoustic guitar-based jams off the EP and the debut record. Thus far in the listening stage, I seem to enjoy more of the musical output that Bret and Jermaine churned out on this go-round.
Southern metalheads Baroness have finally released their long awaited Blue Record. I believe the group will be going for some sort of color theme for their releases if the last one was called The Red Album.
Lots of the songs on this latest release seem to possess stark contrasts to their debut. Gone are the long and sprawling epics. They are now replaced by shorter songs with tighter arrangements. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for the band, especially if they have to mix things up live. These shorter songs could serve as punctuations for the longer pieces that they've historically done if you'd also check their split single and the two EPs they've released thus far. They'll be on tour for the rest of the fall and winter. Too bad there aren't any Seattle dates thus far.
The live track is part of the second CD on the Blue Record. You'll hear the band introduce Isak with a short tribute to Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun. They also played the song that way when I saw them last summer.
Friday night may have been rainy in the flood-strewn streets of downtown Seattle, but that didn't stop Sunny Day Real Estate's homecoming after being on the road for a month from happening.
The group continues to enrapture fans with their complex musical arrangements and Jeremy Enigk's abstract lyrics. The intensity that the band delivered that night was more tempered, more controlled. It was so different from the unbridled force that they showed when I first saw them at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds for Endfest back in 1994. Those two performances may have been slightly different in a sense that the earlier one relied on youth and enthusiasm and the latter leaned on experience and wisdom of age to power through the sets. Both were effective approaches to anyone out there to see them from a performer's standpoint.
The songs they played rushed back quite a bunch of memories: those afternoons after work, listening to KGRG while waiting for my bus ride, I then first heard SDRE's 47 being played almost every day. This was the summer after Kurt Cobain shuffled off this mortal coil. This to me also was the signal of change that once again was supposed to happen to the Seattle music scene. This band is the link between the old grunge school and the sounds of today we all hear in Death Cab For Cutie and their contemporaries.
I can't believe that there was a 15 year gap between when I first saw them and this event. I'm sure that quite a bunch of folks in the audience were also there with me in that rainy field that late summer day to re-experience a bit of youth even if it was just for one evening.
Pop rock favorites Paramore continue to dominate the airwaves with the release of their latest album Brand New Eyes. I'm already liking this album a lot more than their prior release, Riot!. Back are the harder-edged guitars and Hayley Williams' unreal wail. It's less eclectic with the reaches (what I really mean are songs like Fences which I didn't care much for) and a larger focus on grit.
That being said, here's my favorite song off the bunch, Playing God. It borrows a bit from the Kelly Clarkson school of hook-writing. I wouldn't take that against this group since Hayley is one of the other females out there representin' other than the former American Idol contestant.
Totally psyched to catch the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's book Where The Wild Things Are. The weekend can't get here soon enough.
The film preview teaser also wisely used one of the best songs off Arcade Fire's debut album Funeral. Check out the acoustic version of Wake Up.
The first time I ever got to listen to the heavy onslaught of Converge, it was when they opened for Mastodon on the Blood Mountain tour. I never imagined that a guitar sound that heavy could come from a Fender Telecaster. I'll have to thank axe-wielder Kurt Ballou for giving me newfound respect for the instrument.
Speaking of axes, the groups new album Axe To Fall is due to drop on October 20. Here's a taste of what will be pummeling through your head. You may also have to go and see these guys open for High On Fire, Mastodon, and Dethklok on the Metalocalypse tour.
Bad Lieutenant isn't only a dark independent film by Abel Ferrara, it's also the jump-off point and inspiration to former New Order frontman Bernard Sumner. Taking the film namesake, Sumner soldiered on after a very ugly public falling out with bassist Peter Hook. The group just released their debut record Never Shed Another Tear.
