It's always really fascinating to watch a band mature into a more developed and refined faction of pop music bravado, while still experimenting with aesthetics. The Knife started out within the norm of European electro-pop, flaunting hints of bubblegum from their self-titled and then walking the plank between twitched vocals and lucid House music. Once Silent Shout was released, though, they initiated a brand of mystery and intrigue associated mostly with shamans and Dracula.
Also, to be honest, they just became really freakin' creepy. The music was dark and crude, but contained a high ratio of dance-floor abandon able to host many a haunted house party. They also sport really cool bird masks with matching black cloaks. By the way, I just found my halloween costume for 2010.
Karin Dreijer Andersson, one-half of the Knife, upped the anty on creepiness with her solo path as Fever Ray, dealing more with the visceral aspect of the music. Her videos are spectacles in itself and aren't used as marketing tools but more as color for the Knife universe. I mean if you think Lady Gaga pushes costume/makeup envelopes, watch the "Stranger Than Kindness" video and you'll see that Lady Gags is kiddie fodder in comparison. I mean no disrespect to Lady Gaga because I truly do believe she is some kind of ridiculous genius.
In collaboration with Berlin-based producer Mt. Sims and the equally-as-cryptic Planningtorock, The Knife made an opera called "Tomorrow in a Year". Cool. What's it about? Uh, it's based on Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species. That, oddly, sounds like the most logical step for The Knife. And if we know anything about their style, it's that they're a bit odd.
One of the tracks released early was "The Colouring of Pigeons", an 11-minute epic about birds and stuff. Put a little less emphasis on birds and more on epic, and maybe the 11-minute part, because, man, this is epic. Think tribal percussion, film scores, and a good use of electronics to convey foggy and mythic atmosphere.
The song starts out with a really simple drum arrangement that builds on different drum tracks throughout the beginning. It's like no Knife song you've ever heard. A droney string pattern streams with hovering volumes, and then a woman sings in operatic voice. Yes, this song doesn't sound like the Knife, but it possesses the same eerie qualities and determinants of their previous songs.
The song is mostly percussion-based and, of course, follows a story that's omitted from listening to the song by itself. But judging the song from a singular perspective, it's arguably one of the Knife's most realized and complex songs. And the opera itself is a treat to listen to, mixing most of the Knife and Mt. Sims' career-defining sound in a cohesive, and sometimes in-cohesive, opus.
I'm not quite sure whether Charles Darwin had this kind of control with mood in his book, but it makes you wonder how the Knife views existence. Obviously, this is complete speculation on my part, but if we're trying to understand how the Knife operates in music and maybe in life, then I'd say we're hearing music made by individuals who view the man's beginnings as non-comprehensive and bleak.
F***** Up has a pretty admirable career trajectory. Just by the looks of their music catalogue alone, they can account for about as much music as a band that's been around for 15 years. F***** Up did it in about 10. Not only have they unfolded the strict hardcore-punk chaos of their early beginnings to a more rich, complex array of traditional alternative rock and punk, they have also released a dizzying amount of music, including split-EPs and impossible-to-find singles, since their inception in the early 2000s.
Couple Tracks, their new singles compilation, is about as complete and fullfilling an album can get when referring to a band that pride themselves on the delights of vinyl collecting, liner-note analysis and rare mixtape assembly. It would be cheap to call it the band's complete anthology, since it's really just an assortment of B-sides and what-not. No, this album is directed more towards the people who love to categorize their music collection and participate in the hunt for rarities
On the song Couple Tracks, lead singer Damien "Pink Eyes" Abraham calls them "archivists." If you pre-ordered the vinyl months prior, you get a free companion 7-inch oddly called Couple Tracks. It's a single with a song called Heir Apparent on the B-side. So strange that with the release of a singles compilation they'd release a single of the same name (and cover art) right next to it. These guys are really fond of the obscurity, like the dignified vinyl collectors they are.
Since most of these songs are rehashes and edits of songs from years prior, you wouldn't expect anything new. But it's a treat to hear these songs play together in serialized form. Most of it works, and some of it is just F***** Up being too experimental.
"Generations", one of F***** Up's most politically-aware/satirical songs, is also one of their best. It starts with a sample from a group of Palestinians chanting, and then F***** Up build a three-chord melody out of it. What initiates is a pretty anthemic hardcore shout-out-loud song about... well I don't really think they know what it's about either.
"Carried Out to Sea", a song that appeared on their impressive, but flawed hardcore album Hidden World, also appears here as a demo. Both versions sound exactly alike, which shows how little this band needs for improvement. They build on ideas and sometimes the results come out exactly the way it was written on paper.
They mess around with genres, or so they proclaim. They go through a twee-pop phase, but in the F***** Up point-of-view, that just means there's a catchy melody. Pink Eyes still screams during "I Hate Summer" and "Anorak City", two of the most melodic songs I've ever heard by F***** Up, which still manages to sound right at home.
The Daytrotter Session tracks are really hit-or-miss. But that's really the point of Daytrotter, a studio in West Illinois where bands are invited to play their songs with old instruments. It works with bands like Dodos and Department of Eagles, but a band like F***** Up, who are all about multiple guitar tracks with heavy distortion and Pink Eye-growl, well it just doesn't seem right.
F***** Up released a similar singles compilation in 2004 called Epics in Minutes with the same idea. Let's put all of the singles and tapes we've sold out of, and put them in one CD for everyone to share. It was a decent compilation with some gems ("Police") and really old demos of an indecipherable Abraham ("Land of Nod").
Couple Tracks builds on that idea, but with more an emphasis on the collector of wax. You make the singles compilation for people who missed out on purchase. But they made this compilation as a collector's item as well. Releasing this compilation reveals a sense of religious respect for the archive.
There's a youtube video by City Sonic TV where cameras follow Pink Eyes, a mastodon of a man. He's in regular clothes, walking around his local record store talking about D.I.Y. punk. From the interview, you just see the excitement he gets from his surroundings. He refers to buying records as buying artifacts, and claims the record store "is the ritual, this is the church." I would go ahead and say Couple Tracks is their chapter to that bible. Chapter F***** Up, Verse A. Amen.
NOTE: The following blog post, and the ones that proceed it, are articles I wrote for my school newspaper The Beacon under my music column Exploding Head.
So for the past month and a half, I've been trying to scratch dubstep's surface, trying to find as many artists and labels to play on the radio so that I could one day, in the near future, start a dubstep/grime show on Radiate FM. Dubstep, a genre assembled in the heart of London, mixes aspects of Jungle, Drum & Bass, Reggae/Dub and House music. Add a little bit of bass to establish the foundational rhythm and you've got dubstep.
I've been rummaging through dubstep blogs and labels' archives, trying to dig my way into this odd, intriguing London culture. Through my research, I came across Zomby's Where Were You in 92' and while listening to the record, I was reintroduced to the repetitive airhorn sound effect. Most of Zomby's songs contain the airhorn but Where Were You in '92, in particular, goes excess on the airhorn. On purpose, though, because the album acts as a retrospective Jungle throwback record.
But you know what I'm talking about, though. It's the same damn sound effect played in almost every dubstep, dancehall and reggaeton song. It's the same sound effect you've been wondering about since you first heard it on that Nina Sky or Sean Paul song. I've always wondered why this sound effect, of all sound effects is used so heavily in these songs. Why these songs? Why not indie-rock songs or electro?
here's the sample:
Is it a big, raucous behemoth of a sound that acts as some form of a global beacon for music that isn't from America? Most of the songs that supply the horn are by artists from South America, the Carribean or across the pond starting in Africa and and ending somewhere in Brighton. Is it simply just a cool sound used because it adds complexity to the song? I've heard a lot of dubstep songs use the horn sample excessively, possibly to safeguard the track from mediocrity. Well, I'm shoeing in on my former hypothesis.
I also found it singular and weird that I'd spend an entire article writing about a horn. I also found it weird that I'd spend more than one article traveling around the internet and making a couple of phone calls finding an answer to my question. So this article will definitely be continued into a series of articles branching different explanations for the sound, and possibly analyzing the genres in which the sound is employed.
I've been losing my mind, Pixies-style, trying to understand it and I feel as if I'd be providing good service to the concerned reader/music aficionado if I was to tell them what the horn was used for, and not just settle for the horn being used by producers for funsies sake. If you're as obsessive as I am about these little quirks, then hopefully you'd appreciate my trek to make sense out of this damn horn.
Just from simplistic web research and DJ forum-browsing, there are different handles for this dancehall SOS. Some DJs refer to it as the Dub Siren, though, this name is a little deceiving. The Dub Siren is actually an synth/effects pedal used for clubs and parties to modify different preset sounds. It's used mainly for effect and DJs adjust it through a pitch nob. Most of the sounds you'll hear are familiar since they have the same cultural resonance as the airhorn sample.
You can purchase one on eBay for cheap, as far as equipment goes. The seller, circuit-bender, included the product was good for raves, but apparently nobody told them that the "rave" died in the mid-90s.Though, with ever-evolving technology and the portability of autotune, a DJ can just download a Dub Siren on the iPhone app store and form a rave wherever they go. Basically, the physical Dub Siren effect/synth pedal is obsolete these days and can only serve the purpose of being an obscure novelty.
But the airhorn is definitely not called a Dub Siren. So I will consider that statement DEBUNKED!
it's christmas eve and i'm in bed, drinking a beer, blogging, and possibly reverting myself back to online xbox gaming. (modern warfare 2 is just too good).
i saw avatar last night and man it was kinda good. a bit on the silly side, script-wise. definitely a predictable story, but i kinda knew that going into it. it looks great... yet i couldn't help but think james cameron got the idea for avatar by looking at a lisa frank trapper keeper. i mean it's a cool-looking movie... but I think if i was to have come up with a brand new world of creatures and characters, i would've probably thought of something that didn't deal w/ glow-in-the-dark forests. that's just me, though. the action was intense, and there were definitely signs of a james cameron aesthetic (i.e. scientists, marines, guns, explosions), so that was cool. hopefully with the money i paid to watch Avatar, James cameron will somehow find the balls to make a True Lies part 2, because let's face it: True Lies is kinda the best movie of the 90s, next to Con Air, obviously.
well here's what I got planned for tonight! beer, pita chips w/ hummus and tabouli salad, beer, pork leg, beer, tres leches, beer, and then maybe a cookie or two.
also, I just got the Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age EP
it's pretty awesome. just a lot of mixing, noise, field recordings, and broadcast songs. really expanding the psychedelic/stereolab-ish sound to a more obscure and avant level. very cool record and i recommend it if you're either a minor fan of broadcast. or even if you're a fan of more than one artist on the Warp label.
Let me tell you a little something about this show on mTV called Jersey Shore. It is singlehandedly saving television from the ranks of schlocky stuff like Mad Men and 24. Take a look at what I'm talking about:
MAN. If you're not watching this show, then you're probably one of those people that yknow have some kinda moral code, or whatever those things are. BOGUS (what?)
As you saw from the video up top, Jersey Shore is an MTV reality series (I wanna emphasize 'reality' because I really think this is authentic) about people living their lives the way they want to live it. Eight kids who live/fuck in a really shitty timeshare in Seaside Heights. They're just bro-culture personified... or guido, as they call it. The show could be seen as offensive because it displays really vivid stereotypes... but here's the thing: these people on the show KNOW that they're the stereotype. They're fuckin proud of it.
And looking at how ridiculous they are... in a sense they're kinda normal. They obviously live life by different standards: inflicting an incredible amount of damage onto their skin via tanning bed proxies, spending $10,000 a year on hair gel, taking their shirts off, plastic surgery, lip gloss (for the guys), fucking everything. I guess if you judge normality by that, then yes-- they're kinda normal.
Look they do the same things you and I do. We like to hang out with friends, flirt w/ the opposite sex, go out and drink, eat somewhere after, fuck, and shit like that. I don't know. I've seen the show... and not all of the characters and unlikeable. That's who they are and that's how they live. Some of them can even show hints of actual intelligence... and emotion, too. Like one of the characters, "The Situation" (fucking guy -_-), gets really upset because one of his roommates hooked up with Sammi, the girl he was crushing on. He's insecure, man. He needs his abs to get girls. I don't know. I feel bad for the guy, sorta. Then he date rapes all of em'. And then I realize-- FUCK HIM.
I'm always debating whether this blog should be focused around things I like, as a pretty qualified indie-music meteorologist (god I wish that was a real job), or around me, in general. Like should I post blogs about my personal life? I don't know. I mean (wishful thinking) maybe this blog will skyrocket one day in being a really important, and equally relevant, purveyor of new music-- then somebody comes across an old post about a girl I like and my credibility is fucked.
Fuck it-- I think I'll leave my personal stuff for my myspace (because that's something people use, right? I'm 45-years-old)
It's a question that's lingered the music community for about the latter half of 2009. Gucci mane's origins start in Atlanta and he's gone to jail a couple of times. He's definitely one of my favorite southern rappers based on pure skill (if by skill, I mean pure-ridiculousness). He's become somewhat of an oddity in the indie community, becoming kinda ironic, I guess? He would get a lot of press on Pitchfork's pages and then started getting remixed by a ton of weird-abstract electronic artists. It started with SALEM.
Then with HEALTH/Flying Lotus on that new ATL RMX mixtape released by Adult Swim. That mixtape in itself exemplifies this indie infatuation with Southern Rappers. Call it ironic, or whatever-- the heart of the matter is that most of the stuff is good, and that a bulk of these rappers (Gucci Mane not being mutually exclusive-- we're talking Dem Franchize Boyz, Young Jeezy, and OJ Da Juiceman) have the grime appeal... and appeal that works well with the abstract electronic/dubtsteppy/sampladelic stuff.
Even Diplo and his label Mad Decent are releasing a mixtape revolving around Diplo beats and Gucci's rough 'n' tumble lyrics. And on top of that, M.I.A. went out and said her new Diplo-produced album will sound like "Gucci Mane meets Animal Collective". Uhhh does that not sound like the best combination ever? Diplo released a track yesterday sampling Mariah Carey with Gucci on the mic. And it sounds awesome.
It's always really fascinating to watch a band mature into a more developed and refined faction of pop music bravado, while still experimenting with aesthetics. The Knife started out within the norm of European electro-pop, flaunting hints of bubblegum from their self-titled and then walking the plank between twitched vocals and lucid House music. Once Silent Shout was released, though, they initiated a brand of mystery and intrigue associated mostly with shamans and Dracula.
