Year: 2006

bossa nova, batman and elbow

65 looks like an impressive number, but today it’s not. whereas the 66 songs from yesterday represent just over 5 hours of music, today’s 65 only amount to 3.5 hours. this is partially because the severed dreams soundtrack is only 33 minutes for its 22 songs, while mahler’s 6th from yesterday clocks in near 90 minutes but counts as only 4 songs. in any event, i did hear some worthwhile music.

  • fantastic plastic machine [beautiful]
  • elbow [alseep in the back]
  • elliot goldenthal [batman forever]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: severed dreams]
  • ultralounge bossa novaville

Ah, the bossa nova…. it, and to a lesser extent samba, are among my favorite forms of music, so it’s surprising that i don’t have more of it in my collection. nevertheless, it should be no surprise that i’m highly enthralled by bossa novaville, no.14 in the ultralounge series. nineteen super-smooth and relaxing tracks that can’t help but take the edge off whatever’s on your mind.

of course, this is ultralounge we’re talking about, a product of capitol records. it’s designed, packaged and presented to appeal to boomers and retro-culture hipsters alike without being in the slightest way offensive. despite the marketing schtick, the music is quite effective and at the very least, acts as a launching pad for further explorations into the various genres it resurrects. les baxter alone almost justifies the series’ existence.

also in today’s roundup: a somewhat disappointing score for batman forever. beyond treatments and re-workings of danny elfman’s batman theme, nothing here really jumped out at me. about half the tracks got the boot.

and a quick note about elbow: the group is from the UK (manchester, specifically) and i’ve heard them referred to as equal parts radiohead and coldplay. which is sort of true, if radiohead wrote more ballad-type songs and didn’t enjoy rocking out as hard, you might get the mellow stylings of elbow. i guess that’s where the coldplay reference comes from, but elbow is not nearly as insufferable.

Cex – Lyrically Superior, & Random iPod thoughts

I know Apple has repeatedly assured the world that both iTunes and the iPod are truly random devices. And I know that by definition, randomness is unpredictable and that when I’m surprised that my iPod chose to play both Cex’s Being Ridden and Being Ridden Instrumentals within an hour of each other, it’s because my mind is seeking to add order to a chaotic system, searching for a pattern among the data points.

I know true randomness allows for, and even anticipates, such coincidences from time to time, but that doesn’t make the phenomenon any less disconcerting. Not that I’m complaining. Both of Cex’s Being Ridden albums are true works of lyrical and musical poetry and it was a joy to listen to both his nuanced, straight-ahead, hard-charging lyrics and his well-composed music. Without the lyrics, the instrumentals take on a smooth, relaxing, almost orchestral quality, the way the best idm does.

That Kid Rjyan has got some real talent and puts on a good live show too. Mix equal parts Fresh Prince and Eminem, but take away their schtick and you’ll get something close to these albums: a singable but poignant electronic-rocky-hip-hop-hybrid that’s really not like anything you’ve ever heard.

check out these lyrics from Earth-Shaking Event, easily Cex at his finest. Now there’s an ideal I can get behind.

The “art” of the mix

London’s herbaliser brings together a masterpiece on nearly every album and 1997’s blow your headphones is no different. hip-hop-funk-rock at its finest. it’s well composed and smoothly executed; listenable on its own, or as i played it, as some fine background music for a couple rounds of pictionary. i can’t recommend this stuff enough.

Dmitri from Paris‘ A Night at the Playboy Mansion is similar, in that it is also dance-related, but it’s more what I’d term "special purpose music." You see, Dmitri from Paris is actually DJ Dmitri and this album is an example of the most dubious of musical achievements: a mix-album. the idea that someone can stitch together a bunch of somebody else’s songs and essentially laud themselves for the transitions between songs, is just peculiar. I did it in high school, back when we made "mix-tapes," and it’s not that hard. I even did it for free. in the age of the instantly-assembled iTunes playlists and do-it-yourself mixes, the goal of the commercially-released mix-album seems absurd.

That said, A Night at the Playboy Mansion works. dmitri brings back the flavor of those decadent days of disco, for about an hour. But its success is also its failing.

I call this "special purpose music" because it’s not really listenable on its own. It works great to set a party mood or get the energy pumping–anything required to turn on and tune out. Heck, I had it turned up while cleaning the house this weekend. And that ability makes this a record worth keeping, despite my inclination to dump it.

March 10 – 57 songs played.

this morning i increased the number songs on the tunequest playlist from 300 to 1000 songs. that translates to about 110 albums or so, alphabetically ranging from ‘0’ to ‘Bo.’ even though alpha-by-album method pretty much ensures a random assortment of musical styles, i decided i wanted an even larger variety to choose from. so without further ado, here are today’s entries.

  • thomas newman [american beauty]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: the face of the enemy]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: river of souls]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: messages from earth]
  • chris isaak [baja sessions]
  • mercury rev [all is dream]

today was the first of what i’m sure will be several babylon 5 days in the coming weeks. tangerine dream member christopher franke wrote the music for every episode of the epic sci-fi series and has released the score from about 30 of the 110 episodes for a total of about 17 hours to my taste, the music is very laid back and mellow; appropriately spacey with a handful of memorable themes and catchy action cues. thelogbook has just about everything you’d want to know and more. •

i don’t know much about thomas newman or his composing style, but his unorthodox score for the 1999’s american beauty is unique and compelling. i haven’t seen the film, so i don’t know what effect the score generated on screen, but the music, based primarily on percussion, is simple, subtle and itself beautiful. •

lastly, i’ve never paid much attention to Chris Isaak, but a bunch of his albums came with my marriage, and i’ve found that i do enjoy his laid-back style. today, he took me to a little bit of mexico while channeling elvis and roy orbison with his baja sessions. Though he was trying to hard on Only the Lonely.

Years later, System 7 confirms my love of Can

Today’s roundup:

  • system 7 [777]
  • tortoise [digest compendium of the tortoise’s world]
  • oasis [what’s the story morning glory]
  • styrofoam [a heart without a mind] single

A little story about System 7: back in summer of 1997, when only a handful of people knew what "mp3" meant, I ran across a song file called system 7-dizzy spoon on an old-school Hotline server. Being a Mac guy, I was intrigued by a band named after a defunct operating system. And being in the first year of college, I was susceptible to doing the typical college-age experimentation, so download it I did. I remember enjoying the song almost immediately, but because my musical world revolved mostly around rock at the time, I didn’t seek out any other material by the group and left it as a one-off in mt collection.

Then a funny thing happened three years later in summer of 2000. I discovered the most excellent german band of the 70s: Can. The last song on their 1972 album Ege Bamyasi is entitled Spoon and I think I nearly had an aneurysm of excitement the first time I heard heard it. I immediately recognized it as the same song as the Dizzy Spoon file. Rather, it was almost the same song. Dizzy Spoon turned out to be System 7’s contribution to the 1997 Can remix/tribute album Sacrilege.

Since then, Can has become one of my most respected and admired groups for its innovations and influence and I like to think that I was pre-destined to enjoy their music from the moment I downloaded that mislabeled mp3.

As for System 7, the group’s engaging ambient techno continues to entertain me, though 777 is one of their earlier efforts and is a little disappointing. "faydeaudeau" is the standout track and overall the album is decently mellow space out music, even if the composition is overly simple.

Speaking of early works, that Tortoise album is a bit difficult to handle, which is probably why I hadn’t listened to it for nearly 4 years. Digest Compendium is a collection of early singles and remixes, where the group seems more experimental, having not yet found their sound. As such, it’s uneven, and at times dull. Event though Tortoise is one of my favorite bands, I ended up removing a handful of songs from my library because I couldn’t see myself listening to them again. however, it did serve to remind me that I’ve been neglectful of the band lately. I had better rectify that soon.

March 8 – 40 songs played. 24 removed.

today included:

  • bavarian radio orchestra performing beethoven's no.5
  • badly drawn boy [about a boy]
  • english symphony performing delius' florida suite
  • disney's magic skyway music from the 1964 new york world's fair
  • all tomorrow's parties 1.0

you know, the back-to-back playing of delius' florida suite (which is magnificent, btw) with dvorak's no.9 has given me the idea to put together some kind of "impressions of america" compilation. dvorak's 9th was written during the time the czech composer spent in states (it even premiered in new york) and delius was inspired to write his florida suite by his experiences while he live in jacksonville. both composers wrote their works near the end of the 19th century and i guess i'm just intrigued by late-romantic music influenced by the american landscape and psyche of the time. i'd be tempted to only put foreign composers on that compilation (delius was british), but then i wouldn't be able to include copland's appalachian spring.

also, i must call out the disney music. richard and robert sherman's compositions for the magic skyway exhibit at the new york world's fair is simply a modern-era musical gem. the futurism is thick and the music just exudes the scientific and industrial "up-and-go-get-em!" ethos of the era.

Dvorak and Mouse on Mars for a Drive Home

Now that’s more like it. Eight hours of music over two days should put a dent in the deficit i developed over the weekend. If i can keep up the pace of 4 hours of music per day, i’ll complete this project on october 23, 2006. However, 4 hours appears to be my practical listening limit, fat chance on that. Of course, i could be more generous in my weeding, but i suppose that would be cheating.

::

Dvorak’s 9th is among my favorite orchestral works; It so made my evening drive though suburban atlanta much more pleasurable.

Also mixed in today was, for intents and purposes, the Mouse on Mars remix album. It’s not billed as such, but that’s essentially what Agit Itter It It is. It takes material from Niun Niggung and reworks it as if it were from the Idiology session. untitled states of and Spedualist are pretty damn cool that way.