It’s really unfortunate that Metallica’s bass player died in that bus crash…as opposed to the rest of the band. It seems like they have just been de-evolving into primordial sludge ever since. During their heyday I’ll admit I was more interested in punk rock, but I still liked what they were doing along with their somewhat more pathetic, yet equally enjoyable to me, little brother Megadeth. In what appears to be their latest media gaffe, they invited a bunch of journalists to a special listening session of songs from their yet to be released album. After these journalists wrote some reviews on their blogs, they were contacted and told to remove the reviews…no non disclosure contracts were signed, and apparently no one was told not to write about it? So without hearing the album I’m going to write a review about it right here, and see if they contact me to take it down…The new Metallica album sucks as much as the one before it, and if they had any dignity left they’d kill each other. This spoiled bunch of sadly self absorbed has beens have milked the life out of whatever formula they undeniably pioneered and perfected 20 years ago. If you need any proof on what a bunch of useless skinbags these guys have become, view the documentary “Some Kind of Monster” in which they douche it out with each other so much their label has to call in a “band coach” to help them finish their record. It’s clearly one of the most comedic films I’ve seen in years. The ability to play music is a gift…somewhere along the line Lars and James may have forgotten that.
You have to love a band that dresses up in what looks like home made insect superhero costumes (or supervillians it’s hard to tell). San Diego’s synth noise band The Locust also have a pretty fun video filled with creepy bugs and lots of what seems like apocalyptic bug war visions. The music is a mix of metal, punk and aggressive synthesizer mayhem that should appeal to those fans of Ipecac and other metal experimental type stuff.
What do you expect…he’s been unable to shake his 80’s persona forever (despite the numerous attempts) which is not necessarily a bad thing, he was somewhat amusing in his high heels and puffy shirts. This is an interesting development in the arena of online copyright battle, Prince had performed a cover of Radiohead’s song Creep live (if you want to hear a much better Radiohead song watch this). His excited fans had uploaded their videos of said performance to Youtube. Price, being a half-pint Luddite (or at least his representatives) have told Youtube to remove the videos. Tom Yorke has responded basically issuing the statement “Unblock them, it’s our song”. Be curious to see if this develops further.
Here is a Nico song taken from her 1985 album Camera Obscura, which was produced by one of my all time musical heroes John Cale. The song is cut together with scenes from the great Jodorowsky film Santa Sangre. The union seems to work perfectly, capturing the haunting sadness that made both the song and the film great. If you have not read the book Nico: The End I’d strongly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of one of her band mates on what would be her final tour.
Times are changing. Definitely. Celemony is a company started in 1997 by Peter Neubäcker together with his wife, Prof. Dr. Hildegard Sourgens, and software developer and Technical Director, Carsten Gehle, which is based in Munich. They created a program that can analyze audio and edit the individual notes, and also transcribe the notes into music notation and MIDI. While this is not new since several notation programs can this, they have recently found a way to analyze an audio chord and transcribe the individual notes within the chord. Those same notes can be edited within the chord to change the harmony of it.
Another post rock outfit with a long strung out name! Much of the soundscape is familiar to post rock fans, guitars, Rhodes keyboard, drums, and not much vocalizing (none). The latest album from these guys simply titled “birds” contains four different “flocks”. The the instrumentation bounces around seeming to morph sounds into some sort of structure, and while it occasionally slips toward the oh so tiresome slow build formula, the organic sounding samples, combined with enough compositional motion seem to help it from becoming too stale or predictable.
This is a pretty cool rig that visually demonstrates how a drum machine works. The placement of the bearings controls the drum samples of the Roland TR-808, and there is a small CRT underneath which displays current time and state of the beat. This great project and many others were created by Peter Bennet. You can check out his other projects on his website.
It’s good to see the influence of the early Boredoms trickling down into the cracks of the indie rock scene! LA band HEALTH throws down a pretty energetic performance high in the skies of NYC. They are extremely creative and their unrestrained energy is certainly fun to watch. The two drummers add a solid rhythmic foundation to the non traditional song structures.
I haven’t heard much about this site, but it looks poised to do to the music licensing industry what iStock did to the stock photo biz. The site claims to offer a marketplace for musicians to interact directly with music those looking to license music for commercial purposes. They allow the artist and the client to negotiate over the cost, and they take 9%. I’m not sure if this will take off as it depends I think a lot on their marketing abilities…I mean everyone has their music on the internet these days, so if you are looking to license some, you don’t need to look that far. The benefits of this service is it gathers it all together, and categorizes it by mood…that’s what you get for 9%.
UI was always close to my heart as they often used two bassists to create their sample laden post rock compositions. The sound was thick and groove heavy, with lots of tasteful guitar wanderings. They didn’t record many albums (3 i think), their last entitled Answers was released in 2003 and is solid all the way through. Here is a great live studio clip of the song Sleep Hold.
UI Sleep Hold
Link via the excellent Zombi Baba Blog (you can download Answers there…but you should buy it from Southern Records if you can afford it…). you can also check out some clips from a documentary about UI here.
I’d strongly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of one of her band mates on what would be her final tour.