idk if rap battles are considered music so much as- idk, performance, whatever. they're kind of musical? this thread caught my eye because i recently rewatched one of the more popular battles on the internet:
reed dollaz kills here and i just wanted to tell a story: i grew up in pretty rough areas, was a pretty adversarial little shit of a kid and teenager. but i met this guy once (in totally friendly circumstances) and despite him being a real small guy he is just scary. just this little guy giving off the most menacing feeling. that's often part of hip hop cachet, but it seems to really come through in rap battles and influence the feel of the performance.
What I love most about that case/lang/veirs song is that they don't crowd it. Three unique singers who are capable of belting it out--Case in particular has a voice like one of the forces of nature she likes singing about--but they don't get all Mariah Carey on it. My least favourite trend in pop music is the need for singers to fill every second with pitch changes and random words and grunts. Here, it's simple music and beautiful harmonies, and I can't wait for more.
Music thread, you have such trouble staying afloat; what the deal? Not enough discussion?
I've been enjoying this Poliça tune, "Wedding", but I'm finding that for the most part their music is actually pretty boring and the vocalist is dedicated to making really questionable decisions regarding stylized expression and effects modulation. Even on "Wedding" it sounds like she's trying to emulate the clipped enunciation of someone born hearing-impaired and I just don't understand what doing so is contributing to the performance.
On the topic of willfully unintelligible vocals, Boyfrndz announced a new LP dropping in May. Cool stuff if you like reverb-drenched everything and chaotic percussion; sort of a split between newer Tera Melos and older Mars Volta. This from their last record, which showcased a continued effort to make their music more melodic and accessible.
I've listened to some of Boyfrndz's stuff on Bandcamp on and off over the past few years and I kind of dig it, but it's definitely not the kind of thing I want to hear all the time. Yes, I wouldn't describe their music as particularly 'accessible'.
I suspect music threads tend to lose steam because a lot of people like sharing and saying "Hey this is great" but it's less often people want to critically listen to and discuss music they're unfamiliar with. It takes time, effort, and probably a vocabulary a lot of us don't have. I like threads like this, though, to get exposed to new stuff, so keep up the good work people!
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
I suspect music threads tend to lose steam because a lot of people like sharing and saying "Hey this is great" but it's less often people want to critically listen to and discuss music they're unfamiliar with. It takes time, effort, and probably a vocabulary a lot of us don't have. I like threads like this, though, to get exposed to new stuff, so keep up the good work people![/spoiler]
I suppose the Book thread is similarly languorous, but it still surprises me. Other than the Hesher/Metal thread, music discussion seems to be the domain of chat and year-end lists.
Anyway, I was trying to think about @flamebroiledchicken's question about "indie revivalism" vs. contemporary music that attempts to innovate within the framework of its historical precedents. In some respects I think the rate at which contemporary (internet) culture consumes content and acclimates to divergences from previous norms, as well as a pervasive hyperbole proclaiming the uniquity of that which isn't, has inured us against a true awareness of how consistently weird and progressive music of all origins tends to be.
But it's also true that the breadth of available content that the average person can consume is so great that we're acclimating because we're more aware of what's been appropriated, what's being quoted, what's been transposed; very few mysteries remain in the realm of hip-hop samples, and "mash-ups" have practically become little more than the quaint novelties of a generation learning how to use Logic.
Consider CLPPNG — in the context of 30+ years of hip-hop it's firmly outré, with its often hook-free narrative structures, layers of atonal noise, and aesthetic objectives regarding found sound and permissible modulations. Yet all of those qualities have been explored within and without hip-hop over the past century+, and the more aware a listener is of influences ranging from Bomb Squad Productions to Anti-Pop Consortium to goshdarn Ornette Coleman, the less likely we are to recognize that something like CLPPNG could actually be a part of some progressive movement towards a new form of music.
flamebroiled did, however, qualify that the question was more specifically about "guitar rock", which is perhaps more heavily burdened by history, as even when we assert that there's a bit of "90's revivalism" today, that music was effectively a "revival" of music from the 70's and 80's, when there was arguably the greatest amount of progression away from the blues origins of "guitar rock".
To consider what might be innovative in today's guitar-based music, it may help to look at what was innovative in our recent past. From the 90's I think of something like Talk Talk's Laughingstock (1991). In a certain conceptual sense it's akin to CLPPNG, both in terms of how it uses certain "rules" to define compositional development (like "polyrhythmic metrical diminishment", a process by which some instruments progressively excise a beat from sequential measures), and in the way it uses aural signifiers suggestive of more traditional musics, but always in a way that's confrontational. And, unlike a lot of guitar-based music that strives to adhere to formal objectives, it's also heavily improvised and the recordings represent a single live take, sans splicing.
Of course, going back to opening paragraph, it's easy enough to deconstruct and demystify an album like Laughingstock by thinking of it in terms of its diverse precedents, whether that be the spacious burbling jams of CAN's Future Days or the rigorously mathematical constructions of Steve Reich. And perhaps more pertinently its relationship to any notion of "guitar rock" is loose at best, even if it technically makes use of electric guitar.
(Tangentially: As a progenitor of what came to be known as post-rock, it's interesting that many later groups in the genre — like Godspeed, You Black Emperor!, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky — each sought to lesson or excluded entirely the involvement of vocals, which is probably the most distinct aspect of Talk Talk's sound.)
These days guitar-based music that isn't easily reduced to a given common point of reference is often maximalist and avoiding those easily discerned points of reference by overwhelming the senses. Though they seem to have broken up already, Postmadonna is a decent example of how such a style can approach pop ideals and possibly suggest where other bands may pick up from.
But as with anything else, I imagine that most listeners familiar with Postmadonna would probably be familiar with that which came before, like the entirety of the Kinsella bros catalog and Upsilon Acrux — so who was actually progressive?
I'm fortunate to still have such a relatively large amount of time I can devote to poking around in tiny internet music communities, Bandcamp wormholes, randomly generated playlists, and so on in search of new and/or interesting music. Two things I really try to keep an ear out for are 1) musical acts that feel singular and 2) musical acts that are versatile. By #1 I mean something that doesn't feel like part of a scene or established subgenre, but something like The Mountain Goats or Bjork or Beastie Boys or The National, music that sounds like it could never have been made by anybody else, because it doesn't sound like anybody else.
Though I should say that there's nothing wrong with being part of a scene or subgenre at all. Some of my favorite music from recent years has come out of the Philadelphia indie/punk scene. And the mere mention of the words "post-hardcore" is enough to merit my attention. But there is a special place in my heart for those artists who are uniquely themselves.
Sometimes this conflicts with #2, which is versatility. The National for example are totally singular but I wouldn't blame you for complaining that most of their songs sound pretty similar. Personally I think they have a knack for finding infinite surprising nooks and crannies in their basic core sound, but that just goes how subjective of a judgment this really is and how many exceptions there are. That being said, I do find myself getting bored with a deluge of records that have one or two catchy songs and a bunch of similar sounding but less interesting songs. So I really do appreciate it when a band comes along that has a sense for variety. This probably goes back to The Beatles for me but in more recent times I could name Chance the Rapper or Modest Mouse or even Bjork again as acts who are trying different things from song to song.
All talk aside, I'm not super knowledgeable about electronic music but this sounds like nothing I've heard before:
It's interesting, it seems to me like the 80s revivalism of the previous decade's underground/independent scenes (see: Interpol, Bloc Party, The Rapture, anything tagged as "chillwave", even Arcade Fire cribbed from Talking Heads) has moved into the mainstream (see: Taylor Swift, Icona Pop, the 1975) and the underground is now in full-on 90s revival mode (see: Courtney Barnett, Speedy Ortiz and all their garage punk peers, the return of Midwest-style emo, every single shoegaze and alt band announcing a reunion tour). Where will independent music go after 90s revival?
This is a fun time for me as a big fan of guitar rock with heavy distortion and catchy riffs. The bands I love from the mid-80s-to-mid-90s (My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr, Smashing Pumpkins, etc etc etc) are all either making comebacks or there are scores of young bands ripping them off. It's fun but also frustrating because it doesn't really feel like there is a lot of progress being made in the name of independent rock music. Oh, your band sounds like The Cure mixed with Slowdive mixed with Veruca Salt? That's awesome, that sounds totally up my alley, I'm glad so many young bands are making music aimed directly at my pleasure centers, but... who is the next Cure or Slowdive? You know, a band that's not without its own influences (obviously nothing is ever completely new) but is bringing some sort of unique vision to the table?
I realize that music doesn't necessarily need to be progressive in order to be good, but I can only handle so many hot new takes on shoegaze before I start getting bored.
I don't think independent music works like this anymore. Like, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s we had regional, incredibly small scenes usually centered around colleges and labels. Post 2000 that model began to unravel for a lot reasons (easy access to recording tech, easier mass distro networks to name a few). I think what's happening now is that because there is such a volume of music being made it can be difficult to wade through it all, especially because no single source covers the extent of what's happening. This causes people to find clusters of artists they like, which is why it can seem like every indie rock outfit is cribbing from the same influences.
I would recommend taking a look outside the genre a bit as there is a ton of great music being made that doesn't fit into this flavor of indie rock.
yeah it's a little unfortunate how quick people are to say that music from a certain decade (like the 00's!) sucks given that more music comes out each year than any one person will listen to in their lifetime
+1
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
It's interesting, it seems to me like the 80s revivalism of the previous decade's underground/independent scenes (see: Interpol, Bloc Party, The Rapture, anything tagged as "chillwave", even Arcade Fire cribbed from Talking Heads) has moved into the mainstream (see: Taylor Swift, Icona Pop, the 1975) and the underground is now in full-on 90s revival mode (see: Courtney Barnett, Speedy Ortiz and all their garage punk peers, the return of Midwest-style emo, every single shoegaze and alt band announcing a reunion tour). Where will independent music go after 90s revival?
This is a fun time for me as a big fan of guitar rock with heavy distortion and catchy riffs. The bands I love from the mid-80s-to-mid-90s (My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr, Smashing Pumpkins, etc etc etc) are all either making comebacks or there are scores of young bands ripping them off. It's fun but also frustrating because it doesn't really feel like there is a lot of progress being made in the name of independent rock music. Oh, your band sounds like The Cure mixed with Slowdive mixed with Veruca Salt? That's awesome, that sounds totally up my alley, I'm glad so many young bands are making music aimed directly at my pleasure centers, but... who is the next Cure or Slowdive? You know, a band that's not without its own influences (obviously nothing is ever completely new) but is bringing some sort of unique vision to the table?
I realize that music doesn't necessarily need to be progressive in order to be good, but I can only handle so many hot new takes on shoegaze before I start getting bored.
I don't think independent music works like this anymore. Like, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s we had regional, incredibly small scenes usually centered around colleges and labels. Post 2000 that model began to unravel for a lot reasons (easy access to recording tech, easier mass distro networks to name a few). I think what's happening now is that because there is such a volume of music being made it can be difficult to wade through it all, especially because no single source covers the extent of what's happening. This causes people to find clusters of artists they like, which is why it can seem like every indie rock outfit is cribbing from the same influences.
I would recommend taking a look outside the genre a bit as there is a ton of great music being made that doesn't fit into this flavor of indie rock.
yeah it's a little unfortunate how quick people are to say that music from a certain decade (like the 00's!) sucks given that more music comes out each year than any one person will listen to in their lifetime
Argument: Limp Bizkit.
I find the current retread towards 80s moan pop is unfortunate, but I know there are people who love that stuff.
Beautiful thing about music is that there is always something good coming out. I was a little behind when I got Aesop Rocks Zero Dark Thirty but that's a good little album.
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y2jake215certified Flat Birther theoristthe Last Good Boy onlineRegistered Userregular
To be fair to limp bizkit, there are some interesting tracks here and there
Mostly due to Wes Borland being a semi-creative guitarist
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Probably not new to most, but The Pentangle's Basket of Light has been making love to my ears for the last forty minutes. I've heard the album before, but I must have not been paying much attention or something, because I don't remember being this impressed. They infuse folk with jazz, rock, and other elements in an amazingly seamless way.
To follow up my last post tho, Ought is one of the bands that strikes me as pretty different from their peers. They're pulling pretty heavily from Television, mid-80s Sonic Youth, and Joy Division but the presentation is so unlike most things I hear happening in this space.
This album is cool, thanks for the recommendation. Their influences are indeed pretty blatant, but they combine them well (it helps that I like Talking Heads and all of the bands you listed).
Alright, music thread, I pose a question: what is the best era in modern music?
I've long been torn between the late 60s/early 70s and the late 80s/early 90s. The former era saw a beautiful explosion of progressive and psychedelic music and the birth of heavy metal, as well as a lot of awesome jazz/rock fusion. The latter was, in my view, the peak of metal and hip-hop, and the time when electronic music really came to fruition; a far larger portion of the music I listen to comes from this era than any other.
Alright, music thread, I pose a question: what is the best era in modern music?
I've long been torn between the late 60s/early 70s and the late 80s/early 90s. The former era saw a beautiful explosion of progressive and psychedelic music and the birth of heavy metal, as well as a lot of awesome jazz/rock fusion. The latter was, in my view, the peak of metal and hip-hop, and the time when electronic music really came to fruition; a far larger portion of the music I listen to comes from this era than any other.
If I had to pick, I'd overlap with you and argue for the mid-80s through early 90s. It was the era before the major labels and big money got their greedy hands on what was happening in the underground. So you had lots and lots of weird, experimental, progressive shit happening on independent labels. Punk had quickly morphed into multiple strains including post-punk, hardcore, early emo, grunge. You had the no wave/noise/industrial folks experimenting with just how abrasive and atonal you could make music (stuff like Swans, Big Black, early Sonic Youth). On the metal side you had hair metal but also the birth of black metal, death metal, thrash and speed metal as well as metal/punk hybrids like Discharge (who became a genre unto themselves) and Motorhead. You had the whole goth/dream-pop/shoegaze thing going on in the UK. You had the jangly, literary "college rock" of bands like REM, which was basically the blueprint for what came to be known as "indie rock". You had folks like New Order and Depeche Mode playing around with the pop sounds of new wave but making not-quite-pop music with them. In the world of hip-hop, this was the end of the "My name is X and I'm here to say" party era, when NWA and Public Enemy opened the floodgates for Nas, Pac, BIG, and the Wu-Tang to take it to the next level. I don't know much about electronic music, but my understanding is that this was the origin point for house music in Chicago, techno in Detroit, and trance in Germany.
The 80s get such a bad rap because of all the hair metal and cheesy new wave but it was an incredibly fertile time for underground music.
ETA: I recognize that my taste as well as my knowledge of music history is shaped by critics and tastemakers who have cultivated the idea of a particular canon, one which over-prioritizes guitar rock at the expense of lots of stuff like country music, folk, contemporary classical or symphonic music, jazz, regional phenomena like reggae or flamenco or calypso or stuff that just gets filed under "world music", and all sorts of other great music.
The 80s get such a bad rap because of all the hair metal and cheesy new wave but it was an incredibly fertile time for underground music.
In undergrad my audio engineering professors, who had worked extensively in the 80's, loved to talk about how much what people hate about the period is actually a distaste for misuse of early digital technology and the many deleterious consequences of cocaine abuse. In particular, the cocaine high apparently alters perception of high frequency such that you greatly prefer high frequency sound over all else, so a lot of records in the 80's have these brittle mixes that accentuate the "false" qualities of the then new digital reverbs, sampled brass, and synthesized basslines.
To their ears the music itself was often impeccable, composed and performed by professionals with a great understanding of music, its history, and a desire to progress — they were just let down by cultural excess and premature efforts to use technology that even today is still kinda suspect (I'm looking at you sample brass).
what other bands fall under the banner of "90's DC emo"? I know the 80's stuff like Rites of Spring and Dag Nasty but don't really know anything from the 90's there.
Uh, well I guess I'm thinking of stuff ranging from like Moss Icon to Fugazi and early Dismemberment Plan. Mostly it's just groups from the DC/Baltimore area that were sonically indebted to stuff like Rites of Spring, the Minutemen, and Black Flag and sat somewhere in the post-punk/post-hardcore/emo spectrum of rock music that was chaotic but technically proficient, had some intense vocals, and probably worked with Steve Albini at some point.
I'd say I'm too young to really know how any of it was categorized as "emo" in contrast to what eventually became the prevailing notion of "emo", but it was what it was I guess; fits Cattle Drums pretty well though.
Universal Order of Armageddon was super rad (and from that 90's scene):
Seems a bit extreme to suggest hip-hop peaked shortly after it really came into existence.
Yeah, I figured I'd get shit for that. But the jazz-rap of the early 90s and the gangsta rap of the early-mid 90s remains my favorite period in the genre. I certainly can't objectively say the genre "peaked" then, but most of my personal favorite hip hop albums came out between 88-95.
edit - one of my goals in life is to eventually find a hip-hop album I love as much Mobb Deep's The Infamous. I've probably listened to that album a couple of hundred times by now and it has yet to get stale.
Kaputa on
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Alright, music thread, I pose a question: what is the best era in modern music?
I've long been torn between the late 60s/early 70s and the late 80s/early 90s. The former era saw a beautiful explosion of progressive and psychedelic music and the birth of heavy metal, as well as a lot of awesome jazz/rock fusion. The latter was, in my view, the peak of metal and hip-hop, and the time when electronic music really came to fruition; a far larger portion of the music I listen to comes from this era than any other.
Best how? It's hard for me to think about one decade being better than the other since each brought its own developments. I actually think our current moment is pretty fantastic in that it's not characterized by just a handful of dominant styles and there really is something for everybody, but I don't know if that makes it best.
Ha, yeah. I had to just check on Moss Icon; didn't realize how long after they broke up that their music was released.
Still, seems like things didn't really get tagged "emo" until the 90's, I guess when bands like Braid came along. Maybe you'd know better though?
I'm not really an expert on things or history, tbh. Not sure how things were branded in the 80s/90s.
Anyways, speaking of emo, the first half of 2016 is ridiculous with new releases. Drops from Tiny Moving Parts, The Hotelier, Signals Midwest, Tancred and Into It. Over It., TWIABP as well as the Snowing reunion. So stoked.
+1
VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Posts
@Organichu def feel free to share rap battles
my favorite (kind of) rap battle is still this video of biggie just freestyling at a block party here in clinton hill or maybe bed stuy
i think he was like 17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hbwdAOogBw
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7aKwegqNyU
it's on spotify, too
I've been enjoying this Poliça tune, "Wedding", but I'm finding that for the most part their music is actually pretty boring and the vocalist is dedicated to making really questionable decisions regarding stylized expression and effects modulation. Even on "Wedding" it sounds like she's trying to emulate the clipped enunciation of someone born hearing-impaired and I just don't understand what doing so is contributing to the performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDrJZ-Ds7Rg
On the topic of willfully unintelligible vocals, Boyfrndz announced a new LP dropping in May. Cool stuff if you like reverb-drenched everything and chaotic percussion; sort of a split between newer Tera Melos and older Mars Volta. This from their last record, which showcased a continued effort to make their music more melodic and accessible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GnfAb8-k7c
I think this is a good set by them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g48KwT6vA8c
Just to go meta:
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
I suppose the Book thread is similarly languorous, but it still surprises me. Other than the Hesher/Metal thread, music discussion seems to be the domain of chat and year-end lists.
Anyway, I was trying to think about @flamebroiledchicken's question about "indie revivalism" vs. contemporary music that attempts to innovate within the framework of its historical precedents. In some respects I think the rate at which contemporary (internet) culture consumes content and acclimates to divergences from previous norms, as well as a pervasive hyperbole proclaiming the uniquity of that which isn't, has inured us against a true awareness of how consistently weird and progressive music of all origins tends to be.
But it's also true that the breadth of available content that the average person can consume is so great that we're acclimating because we're more aware of what's been appropriated, what's being quoted, what's been transposed; very few mysteries remain in the realm of hip-hop samples, and "mash-ups" have practically become little more than the quaint novelties of a generation learning how to use Logic.
Consider CLPPNG — in the context of 30+ years of hip-hop it's firmly outré, with its often hook-free narrative structures, layers of atonal noise, and aesthetic objectives regarding found sound and permissible modulations. Yet all of those qualities have been explored within and without hip-hop over the past century+, and the more aware a listener is of influences ranging from Bomb Squad Productions to Anti-Pop Consortium to goshdarn Ornette Coleman, the less likely we are to recognize that something like CLPPNG could actually be a part of some progressive movement towards a new form of music.
CLPPNG — "Get Up" :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTPWY8MMGOk
flamebroiled did, however, qualify that the question was more specifically about "guitar rock", which is perhaps more heavily burdened by history, as even when we assert that there's a bit of "90's revivalism" today, that music was effectively a "revival" of music from the 70's and 80's, when there was arguably the greatest amount of progression away from the blues origins of "guitar rock".
To consider what might be innovative in today's guitar-based music, it may help to look at what was innovative in our recent past. From the 90's I think of something like Talk Talk's Laughingstock (1991). In a certain conceptual sense it's akin to CLPPNG, both in terms of how it uses certain "rules" to define compositional development (like "polyrhythmic metrical diminishment", a process by which some instruments progressively excise a beat from sequential measures), and in the way it uses aural signifiers suggestive of more traditional musics, but always in a way that's confrontational. And, unlike a lot of guitar-based music that strives to adhere to formal objectives, it's also heavily improvised and the recordings represent a single live take, sans splicing.
Talk Talk — "After The Flood" :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqarVYGcT5M
Of course, going back to opening paragraph, it's easy enough to deconstruct and demystify an album like Laughingstock by thinking of it in terms of its diverse precedents, whether that be the spacious burbling jams of CAN's Future Days or the rigorously mathematical constructions of Steve Reich. And perhaps more pertinently its relationship to any notion of "guitar rock" is loose at best, even if it technically makes use of electric guitar.
(Tangentially: As a progenitor of what came to be known as post-rock, it's interesting that many later groups in the genre — like Godspeed, You Black Emperor!, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky — each sought to lesson or excluded entirely the involvement of vocals, which is probably the most distinct aspect of Talk Talk's sound.)
These days guitar-based music that isn't easily reduced to a given common point of reference is often maximalist and avoiding those easily discerned points of reference by overwhelming the senses. Though they seem to have broken up already, Postmadonna is a decent example of how such a style can approach pop ideals and possibly suggest where other bands may pick up from.
Postmadonna — "Whose Absinthe is This?" :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93JN5mwyljk
But as with anything else, I imagine that most listeners familiar with Postmadonna would probably be familiar with that which came before, like the entirety of the Kinsella bros catalog and Upsilon Acrux — so who was actually progressive?
TL;DR — Ain't nothin' new under the sun.
Though I should say that there's nothing wrong with being part of a scene or subgenre at all. Some of my favorite music from recent years has come out of the Philadelphia indie/punk scene. And the mere mention of the words "post-hardcore" is enough to merit my attention. But there is a special place in my heart for those artists who are uniquely themselves.
Sometimes this conflicts with #2, which is versatility. The National for example are totally singular but I wouldn't blame you for complaining that most of their songs sound pretty similar. Personally I think they have a knack for finding infinite surprising nooks and crannies in their basic core sound, but that just goes how subjective of a judgment this really is and how many exceptions there are. That being said, I do find myself getting bored with a deluge of records that have one or two catchy songs and a bunch of similar sounding but less interesting songs. So I really do appreciate it when a band comes along that has a sense for variety. This probably goes back to The Beatles for me but in more recent times I could name Chance the Rapper or Modest Mouse or even Bjork again as acts who are trying different things from song to song.
All talk aside, I'm not super knowledgeable about electronic music but this sounds like nothing I've heard before:
https://youtu.be/02k126v3Zu4
These ladies are awesome. They're twin sisters and I think latino - they're listed on alt latino, anyway.
Oya is, according to rap genius, "yoruba mythology the goddess of the wind, owner of the underworld and cemeteries."
there's a french bridge, which (roughly) translates to
Ah , you're the one and only
You who speaks to my heart
Ah , you're the one and only
But leaving without me
You who leaves without me
this is another very cool song of theirs, the drop isn't until the last minute or so but it's worth the wait imo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlAX-QrpiOE
yeah it's a little unfortunate how quick people are to say that music from a certain decade (like the 00's!) sucks given that more music comes out each year than any one person will listen to in their lifetime
Argument: Limp Bizkit.
I find the current retread towards 80s moan pop is unfortunate, but I know there are people who love that stuff.
Beautiful thing about music is that there is always something good coming out. I was a little behind when I got Aesop Rocks Zero Dark Thirty but that's a good little album.
Mostly due to Wes Borland being a semi-creative guitarist
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlIMaw5vlU
the guitar work in this song is just
beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY15WE8F4KM
Great stuff if you like Klaus Schulze or maybe Tangerine Dream. The spacey ambience is mixed with some cool church organ-sounding progressions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt4lm6nEJDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2cBT8--7tA
This album is cool, thanks for the recommendation. Their influences are indeed pretty blatant, but they combine them well (it helps that I like Talking Heads and all of the bands you listed).
I've long been torn between the late 60s/early 70s and the late 80s/early 90s. The former era saw a beautiful explosion of progressive and psychedelic music and the birth of heavy metal, as well as a lot of awesome jazz/rock fusion. The latter was, in my view, the peak of metal and hip-hop, and the time when electronic music really came to fruition; a far larger portion of the music I listen to comes from this era than any other.
That said, as impossible as it really is to answer that question, I think a lot of my favorite records are from like '85 - '96.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPZUo_hps9w
To:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cd5NPnNWxg
oh man this is good
If I had to pick, I'd overlap with you and argue for the mid-80s through early 90s. It was the era before the major labels and big money got their greedy hands on what was happening in the underground. So you had lots and lots of weird, experimental, progressive shit happening on independent labels. Punk had quickly morphed into multiple strains including post-punk, hardcore, early emo, grunge. You had the no wave/noise/industrial folks experimenting with just how abrasive and atonal you could make music (stuff like Swans, Big Black, early Sonic Youth). On the metal side you had hair metal but also the birth of black metal, death metal, thrash and speed metal as well as metal/punk hybrids like Discharge (who became a genre unto themselves) and Motorhead. You had the whole goth/dream-pop/shoegaze thing going on in the UK. You had the jangly, literary "college rock" of bands like REM, which was basically the blueprint for what came to be known as "indie rock". You had folks like New Order and Depeche Mode playing around with the pop sounds of new wave but making not-quite-pop music with them. In the world of hip-hop, this was the end of the "My name is X and I'm here to say" party era, when NWA and Public Enemy opened the floodgates for Nas, Pac, BIG, and the Wu-Tang to take it to the next level. I don't know much about electronic music, but my understanding is that this was the origin point for house music in Chicago, techno in Detroit, and trance in Germany.
The 80s get such a bad rap because of all the hair metal and cheesy new wave but it was an incredibly fertile time for underground music.
ETA: I recognize that my taste as well as my knowledge of music history is shaped by critics and tastemakers who have cultivated the idea of a particular canon, one which over-prioritizes guitar rock at the expense of lots of stuff like country music, folk, contemporary classical or symphonic music, jazz, regional phenomena like reggae or flamenco or calypso or stuff that just gets filed under "world music", and all sorts of other great music.
In undergrad my audio engineering professors, who had worked extensively in the 80's, loved to talk about how much what people hate about the period is actually a distaste for misuse of early digital technology and the many deleterious consequences of cocaine abuse. In particular, the cocaine high apparently alters perception of high frequency such that you greatly prefer high frequency sound over all else, so a lot of records in the 80's have these brittle mixes that accentuate the "false" qualities of the then new digital reverbs, sampled brass, and synthesized basslines.
To their ears the music itself was often impeccable, composed and performed by professionals with a great understanding of music, its history, and a desire to progress — they were just let down by cultural excess and premature efforts to use technology that even today is still kinda suspect (I'm looking at you sample brass).
what other bands fall under the banner of "90's DC emo"? I know the 80's stuff like Rites of Spring and Dag Nasty but don't really know anything from the 90's there.
I'd say I'm too young to really know how any of it was categorized as "emo" in contrast to what eventually became the prevailing notion of "emo", but it was what it was I guess; fits Cattle Drums pretty well though.
Universal Order of Armageddon was super rad (and from that 90's scene):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3ZtdZz6LZU
and Zona Mexicana was another (contemporary, I should say) band from upstate New York and sort of a precursor to Cattle Drums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JvPoVkPxxU
those bands are from the 80s :P
it's cool, I was just wondering if there was a big movement/scene that I wasn't already familiar with
Still, seems like things didn't really get tagged "emo" until the 90's, I guess when bands like Braid came along. Maybe you'd know better though?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc
edit - one of my goals in life is to eventually find a hip-hop album I love as much Mobb Deep's The Infamous. I've probably listened to that album a couple of hundred times by now and it has yet to get stale.
Best how? It's hard for me to think about one decade being better than the other since each brought its own developments. I actually think our current moment is pretty fantastic in that it's not characterized by just a handful of dominant styles and there really is something for everybody, but I don't know if that makes it best.
Is that a good enough non-answer?
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
I'm not really an expert on things or history, tbh. Not sure how things were branded in the 80s/90s.
Anyways, speaking of emo, the first half of 2016 is ridiculous with new releases. Drops from Tiny Moving Parts, The Hotelier, Signals Midwest, Tancred and Into It. Over It., TWIABP as well as the Snowing reunion. So stoked.
Billy Idol had a pretty great voice. Maybe he still does.
Mndsgn is kinda like what Dudley Perkins could have been if whatshisname wasn't so grating (I can't remember what Dudley's emcee name was).
I've been on a major IIOI buzz lately
Seen Evan perform three times now and each time has been an absolute joy