Month: April 2006

April 14-17 : 163 songs played. 25 removed

&t

last week was a good week for tunequest. not only is 381 songs a new weekly best, but i achieved a new daily best on april 10. this is precisely the pace i need to keep, but in retrospect it seems i spent all my free time working on this project last week and i hope not to burn out on it. as a bit of a bonus, i had a more productive than usual weekend contributing to this week’s gains.

and while i’m on the subject of progress, i made some new calculations that take into account the rate at which i’m weeding songs from my library, not just the rate at which i’m listening. so far, i’ve had a net decline of 5 songs per day. i’m fine with that; i know i’ve had detritus accumulating for years now and it needs to be cleared out. when those numbers are taken into account, it looks like i would be able to get though an additional 13,000 songs before the end of the year, a 1500 song surplus, which is certainly more optimistic than what the graphs are saying.

and while i’m on the subject of calculations (take that, segue!), i discovered that after 2 months of listening, the top 10% of songs are now responsible for 46% of the total playcounts, a 3% decline from when i started. this has lead me thinking about the iTunes library as a metaphor for economics and society. i imagine the total number of songs to be the population of a society and the number of plays a song has represents its "wealth." heck, this model even takes into account governmental directives; by listening to the lower-played songs, i’m "aiding the poor." this would be a fascinating essay to write. i may just do some research on it.

but enough meta, onward tunequest:

  • add n to (x) [avant hard]
  • michael andrews [donnie darko]
  • dennis mccarthy [deep space nine: the visitor]
  • dave grohl/foo fighters [dave grohl demos]
  • gorillaz [demon days]
  • glitter mini 9 [break up at the rock show]
  • philip glass [dracula]
  • golden shower GS [digital 2600]
  • four tet [dialogue]
  • nine inch nails [the fragile – left]
  • cibo matto [stereo type a]
  • howard shore [lord of the rings: the two towers]
Derided as self-indulgent by many, the fact of the matter remains that nine inch nails‘ the fragile contains some of trent’s best songwriting, just mixed in with more filler. ‘the day the world went away,’ ‘even deeper,’ and ‘the wretched’ (especially that one) are among the finest in the entire nails catalog. most of the fragile’s strength is on the ‘left’ disc, though ‘right’ starts off well but quickly meanders, but that’s a topic for another post. •

the dave grohl demos bootleg i picked up in paris (at fnac, maybe) 10 years ago, when foo fighters were still very new and still "dave grohl’s new solo side project." it’s an interesting collection of mostly pre-nirvana material, much of which would be reworked for inclusion on foo fighters self-titled and the colour and the shape. there’s even a live performance of ‘down in the park’ (official version appears on songs in the key of x) where dave doesn’t quite know the words and a solo acoustic version of ‘marigold’ (titled ‘color pictures of a marigold’), the ‘heart-shaped box’ b-side and only nirvana song that dave gets sole writer’s credit for. •

quickies:
miho and yuka, please stop appearing on everyone else’s records and put together a new cibo matto record, stereo type a is brilliant and we want some more, dammit. and don’t give me any of that ‘"we’ve broken up" business. you’re good on your own, but you’re great together.
speaking of miho, gorillaz’s demon days is an ok record, though somewhat disappointing. ‘feel good inc’ and ‘fire coming out of a monkey’s head’ are superlative.
and finally, i have heard the soundtrack to the end of the world, and it is ‘revenge of the black regent’ by add n to (x).

break up at the rock show

sometime in 2001, i bought an "indie" music magazine, probably cmj or some similar trash rag. you know, i tried to subscribe to cmj once, but they only sent me bills, never any magazines, so i quickly got fed up and have not read an issue since. but that one particular issue came with a cd that had some 150 or so mp3s from as just many bands. and they all sucked, except one: glitter mini 9’s ‘cuckoo’ from breakup at the rock show.

that record is a wonderful mess of girrl rock angst delivered with so much hard-driving post-alternative pop savvy, it’s captivating.

break up at the rock show is pretty damn awesome. it’s too bad the group itself broke up in 2003.

epitonic has a couple downloads.

Golden Shower – Video Computer System: Pixelated Nostalgia

Despite its, um, colorful name, Golden Shower is a Brazilian outfit that produces some excellent electronic music, all of it heavily inspired by the sounds of the 1980s. For something that will blow the mind of any child of that decade, watch the award-winning video (2000 MTV Brasil Video Music Awards) for Video Computer System, then download the song itself.

The video is a tribute to the classic games of the Atari gaming system and the song is actually composed of beeps, boops and other sounds sampled from various gaming titles. The premise is that a protagonist must make his way to a G.S. concert while overcoming typical obstacles from the Atari gaming world including Frogger, Pitfall, Missile Command, Pac Man and others.

At one point, he gets killed, but it’s ok, he’s got another life. Also, the video features some pixelated “bullet time,” which is an interesting concept.

Golden Shower has never released an album in its ten year history, nor is it what is normally called a “band.” It’s more of an art and culture project and all its materials are downloadable. Check it out, I say.

Golden Shower – Video Computer System Atari

John Barry works some stringy magic

John Barry, a renowned musical master delivers a most sweepingly sentimental score to the 1995 IMAX film Across the Sea of Time, a visually impressive (so I’ve heard) love letter to New York City, past and present. At a time when Barry’s output had slowed to a trickle, this project was done by special request of his son. It’s clear that he put lots of care and attention to this music. Every note feels perfect. I haven’t seen the film and I’m not sure I’d ever want to, as it might ruin the majesty that is this suite. Barry’s themes are lush and full-bodied at a moderate subtle tempo that is simply mesmerizing. And his strings! John Barry can work the string section like no other.

Hum – Downward is Heavenward: gotta go down to get up

Hum’s Downward is Heavenward is a lost gem among rock records in general and 90s rock records especially. Those of you with particularly acute memories might recall that Hum scored a minor US hit in 1995 with the single Stars which is actually one of the weaker songs imho from You’d Prefer an Astronaut.

Even so, I really enjoyed that album and, during that year, Hum became one of my top tier bands for the remainder of high school and the beginning of college. Devoted fan that I was, I eagerly awaited the band’s next album. On the cold January morning in 1998 that Downward is Heavenward was released, I remember leaving school between classes and waiting for the mall to open so I could buy it.

But it seems I may have been the only person who did that, because this album tanked… big time. The album barely made a splash and no one seemed to take any notice of it. Sales were abysmal and the record label (RCA) dropped the band later that year. The group split up shortly thereafter.

I once had a short-lived newspaper column called ‘records that time forgot’ where I would find old, nearly forgotten records at used stores, thrift shops, etc, with an eye toward resurrecting lost masterpieces, and then write about them. Downward is Heavenward almost became the subject of one, even though the album was barely 3 years old at the time, because I felt it hadn’t had the chance to be remembered, let alone forgotten. And that’s a real shame, because this thing is smartly put together and executed by expert musicians.

Like its predecessor, this album features some very tight and complex songwriting, with a brilliantly clean distortion that overlaps shrouded and oblique, but thought-provoking lyrics delivered with such earnestness by Matt Talbot. Then there’s that guitar riff that never seems to end in Ms. Lazarus, I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard anything so intriguing.

April 11-13

wow. a whirlwind of music the past couple days. i guess that’s what happens when impending deadlines force you to stay at the office into the wee hours of the evening. who says publishing isn’t a rewarding field?

some great music this time around:

  • alan silvestri [back to the future ii]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: the ragged edge]
  • string theory [anhedonia]
  • hum [downward is heavenward]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: lines of communication]
  • medeski, martin and wood [combustication]
  • john barry [across the sea of time]
  • stereolab [dots and loops]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: the coming of shadows]
  • daft punk [discovery]
  • at home with the groovebox
  • mikhail pletnev performing tchaikovsky’s morceaux (18) for piano
  • mouse on mars [distoria ep]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: no surrender no retreat]
  • oslo philharmonic performing tchaikovsky’s manfred symphony
  • yoko kanno [cowboy bebop: vitaminless]
  • orbital [diversions]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5 volume 1]
  • man or astroman? [destroy all astromen!]

•

dots and loopswhile we’re on the subject of leaps-above-the-bar music, i must also mention both stereolab’s dots and loops and hum’s downward is heavenward. though i’ve been a stereolab fan for quite some time now (i’ve even been to 2 shows), i didn’t realize until i was preparing this write up how highly rated dots and loops is. stereolab is a great band, but it can be very uneven. on most albums, every 5 star song is countered by a 3 star song (the lowest on my ratings scale; 1 and 2 stars are reserved for organizational purposes), but not dots and loops. every song on that album is either 4 or 5 stars. ‘miss modular, ‘prisoner of mars’ and ‘parsec’ stick out as particularly outstanding works.

i remember my first stereolab reference. it was my senior year of high school and i was on a road trip with 2 friends and my mom, scouting colleges in central florida. we were walking around the campus of the florida institute of technology when my friend roy mentioned that he was getting into this new band stereolab (of course, the band had been together about 6 years at that point, but it was new to him). now, i never really trusted roy’s musical recommendations. our tastes overlapped for the most part, but not enough for me to heed his opinion. nothing really came of it, but i do remember seeing dots and loops laying about his room. it wasn’t until 2 years later when i heard cobra and phases that roy was vindicated in that regard. the rest, as they say, is history. •

a note about the babylon 5 music: i’ve gotten about 60% though my collection of it and i still can’t make head or tails of it. it all just sounds so… the same. the 30+ albums that make up the more than 17 hours of music is a lot to digest, particularly when it’s all a similar style. that’s not to say that it’s not good. each season’s theme is excellent of course, and some choice cues are great, such as the classical guitar work that i heard in the ragged edge today. but there’s a lot of more ambient ‘mood setting’ music that kinda blends together from album to album, which makes it hard to decide which tracks to take special note of.

then of course, there’s the coming of shadows, which also made the playlist today. the entire production team was firing on all cylinders for this episode, including christopher franke, who has written some very tense music for a very tense episode. if i had to recommend any of the babylon 5 albums, it would be this one. •

quickies:
some smooth slacker jazz from medeski, martin and wood.
the surf-inspired stylings of man or astroman?, including a rendition of the MST3K theme.
some competent electronic work from orbital.