Albums you've been listening to lately

[UnfluffyBunny]

Serj Tankian's new album "elect the dead" is a current fave, Breed 77's "in my blood" has crept back onto my playlist

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Sort out this combination:

Klaus Nomi - both the eponymous debut album and Simple Man
H.I.M. - 666 Ways to Love: Prologue
tool - Ænima
hum - You'd Prefer an Astronaut

I suppose I'm stuck in an end-of-the-semester/end-of-the-year/end-of-the-world funk...

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[Camma]

Today the aural assault continues:

Im listening to Devil Driver's second album (Fury of Our Maker's Hand).  If you havent heard or heard of them i definetly recommend them.  Next big thing in metal IMO.  The lead singer/frontman is Dez Fafara formerly the singer of Coal Chamber.  If you ever heard Coal Chamber you will know what a distinctive and powerful voice Dez has.  DD has a recently released album which is great but lately ive been rockin' the second album.

[BWPS]

Silverchair - Young Modern
Silverchair is one of the best bands ever... again. They sound absolutely nothing like they did before and yet are still equally awesome. The new CD is really amazing.

Anyway, I should avoid the music threads before I start a fight.

[Camma]

Silverchair - Young Modern
Silverchair is one of the best bands ever... again. They sound absolutely nothing like they did before and yet are still equally awesome. The new CD is really amazing.

Anyway, I should avoid the music threads before I start a fight.

Bwah? I didn't even know they were back.  I remember their debut, they were really talented, especially given their age at the time.  Ill have to check out the new stuff.

How have they changed?  I mean they arent a hip hop outfit now are they?

...And Im always up for a fight, Grrrrrr  :P

[zuludelta]

Crazy Ken Band - Galaxy: They play a particular type of lounge-meets ska-meets jazz pop music that's almost a genre in itself in Japan. Haven't really heard much of their stuff prior to this album, but it's pretty fun listening, I'm a sucker for good horn arrangements.

Media Links:

Amanogawa (excellent use of traditional koto string music mixed with modern R&B/hip-hop)

GT (from an earlier album, グランツーリズモ a.k.a. Gran Turismo)

I Like Sushi (from an earlier album 777)

And just because it's December, here's the cheesy Christmas Nante Daikirai! Nanchatte!

Official Website: http://www.crazykenband.com/ (the main page has a flash player that plays tracks off their new CD "Soul")

[BWPS]

Silverchair - Young Modern
Silverchair is one of the best bands ever... again. They sound absolutely nothing like they did before and yet are still equally awesome. The new CD is really amazing.

Anyway, I should avoid the music threads before I start a fight.

Bwah? I didn't even know they were back.  I remember their debut, they were really talented, especially given their age at the time.  Ill have to check out the new stuff.

How have they changed?  I mean they arent a hip hop outfit now are they?

...And Im always up for a fight, Grrrrrr  :P

No way, he sings extremely high pitched, the only band I can kind of think to relate them to is Queen, but really that's not a good comparison. I hated it first because it wasn't what I wanted to hear from them.
http://www.myspace.com/silverchair
Their new single Straight Lines is one of the best songs I've ever heard.

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

[zuludelta]

Need some energetic music to keep me awake while I cram some work, so I ended up putting on Pizzicato Five's Singles (something of a Greatest Hits compilation). Pizzicato Five popularized what's called shibuya-kei, a subgenre of Japanese dance/pop music that originated in Tokyo's Shibuya district. It takes elements of 1960s lounge, French/Quebec yé-yé music, early rock, and disco. Awesome stuff to boogie to.

Media links:
Sweet Soul Revue
Mon Amour Tokyo
Triste
La regle du jeu
Darling of Discotheque

[Verfall]

And since I'm still on the "guitars and hot lead singers kick", from the new Within Temptation album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5hDEtS_uBc

[zuludelta]

Kazuo Sawa - Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (a.k.a. River City Ransom) OST: not technically an actual released album, just a gamerip of the PCE-CD version of the game's soundtrack (which is slightly fancier than the original 8-bit sound of the Famicom version). One of my favourite games of all-time!

Media links:

Gameplay video

[MJB]

Dethklok: Dethalbum.

http://myspace.com/dethklok

*cough*

What?

-MJB

[UnfluffyBunny]

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

it's generally politer to keep these kinds of oppinions to yourself, especially considering what seems to be close to a majority direction in this thread...

[Verfall]

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

it's generally politer to keep these kinds of oppinions to yourself, especially considering what seems to be close to a majority direction in this thread...

What he said.

[Alphanaut]

Dethklok: Dethalbum.

http://myspace.com/dethklok

*cough*

What?

-MJB

Most BROOTAL album ever. I love it.

[Figure Fan]

I've been listening to all of the Weezer Albums, but mostly their newest album, Make Believe.

I love Weezer. They are just..something..and it works for how I feel right now.

[zuludelta]

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

it's generally politer to keep these kinds of oppinions to yourself, especially considering what seems to be close to a majority direction in this thread...

While I agree that BWPS' post could have been worded better, I don't want people to think that they aren't allowed to express any negative opinions concerning specific examples of music in this thread. If you think something "sucks," it would probably be received better if you tried to give reasons why you think the way you do so as to stimulate some reasonable discussion.

Here's me doing my part  :):

As a fan of pretty much all music, I do find a lot of recent "new" metal to be derivative-sounding. Now, I don't think you could plainly blame the artists for retreading old ground, it's just that there are only so many metal-specific influences to be mined that eventually, unless the artists make a concerted effort to pick up a musical vocabulary from outside the genre (similar to what Ministry did taking cues from electronica/house music and Pantera's Dimebag Darrell did by incorporating jazz inflections in his guitar solos), it will all start sounding pretty monotonous and indistinct from one another. This isn't a problem inherent with metal mind you, it's a fairly common symptom of many musical genres that have a somewhat self-limiting definition of what they're supposed to sound like. A lot of "new" roots-reggae, roots Americana (traditional blues, bluegrass), hip-hop, jazz, so-called "punk," and classical music are simply variations on a theme established by the giants of the field, and it's the same thing with metal.

Not that sounding like somebody that came before is automatically a bad thing, especially when those predecessors are worthy of emulation. Sounding like vintage Metallica or Black Sabbath or Venom (or Chet Atkins, Bob Marley, or Afrika Bambataa) isn't something to be ashamed of. But as a listener whose primary exposure to the music was through the early innovators, my default preference will always skew towards the ones being emulated and not the ones doing the emulating, unless it's the somewhat rare case of an artist or a band re-shaping those genre-specific influences into a sum bigger and better than or at least different from the component influences. Of course, to me, the most favourable musical act would be one that resists the creative pressures of any genre labels and just puts out good music mindless of whether it conforms to some preconceived notion of genre and type.   

[Midnight]

Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese

It's freakin' Primus!

[Verfall]

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

it's generally politer to keep these kinds of oppinions to yourself, especially considering what seems to be close to a majority direction in this thread...

While I agree that BWPS' post could have been worded better, I don't want people to think that they aren't allowed to express any negative opinions concerning specific examples of music in this thread. If you think something "sucks," it would probably be received better if you tried to give reasons why you think the way you do so as to stimulate some reasonable discussion.

Here's me doing my part  :):

As a fan of pretty much all music, I do find a lot of recent "new" metal to be derivative-sounding. Now, I don't think you could plainly blame the artists for retreading old ground, it's just that there are only so many metal-specific influences to be mined that eventually, unless the artists make a concerted effort to pick up a musical vocabulary from outside the genre (similar to what Ministry did taking cues from electronica/house music and Pantera's Dimebag Darrell did by incorporating jazz inflections in his guitar solos), it will all start sounding pretty monotonous and indistinct from one another. This isn't a problem inherent with metal mind you, it's a fairly common symptom of many musical genres that have a somewhat self-limiting definition of what they're supposed to sound like. A lot of "new" roots-reggae, roots Americana (traditional blues, bluegrass), hip-hop, jazz, so-called "punk," and classical music are simply variations on a theme established by the giants of the field, and it's the same thing with metal.

Not that sounding like somebody that came before is automatically a bad thing, especially when those predecessors are worthy of emulation. Sounding like vintage Metallica or Black Sabbath or Venom (or Chet Atkins, Bob Marley, or Afrika Bambataa) isn't something to be ashamed of. But as a listener whose primary exposure to the music was through the early innovators, my default preference will always skew towards the ones being emulated and not the ones doing the emulating, unless it's the somewhat rare case of an artist or a band re-shaping those genre-specific influences into a sum bigger and better than or at least different from the component influences. Of course, to me, the most favourable musical act would be one that resists the creative pressures of any genre labels and just puts out good music mindless of whether it conforms to some preconceived notion of genre and type.   

Since we're going to debate a bit, here's something to mull over. Show me a musical genre that isn't re-treading old ground nowadays? Every musical genre has a specific sound, or set of sounds, that is guaranteed to sell. So in turn, the record exec's find as many of these bands as possible, crap out albums as fast as possible, and try to reap the rewards before the buying public gets bored and moves onto the next big thing.  Metal recently has gone back to a more early 80's, pre hair metal sound in many cases, as well as picking up a much more European sound thanks to the internet and its exposure. As well progressive rock has started to pick up in the metal scene again.

But again, derivative or not, saying any musical style sucks just makes me regard that person and their opinion as, well, they're an idiot. Every musical style and genre has some redeeming quality somewhere. Bands can suck. Singers can suck. But an entire musical style? For example, by saying Metal sucks, you in turn are saying Johnny Cash sucks. Crazy logic, I know, but many metal performers regard the Man in Black as a major influence in their music. But if you go and say "Limp Bizkit sucks", well than you're expressing your opinion about one band, who in the genre really really sucked. That I can tolerate. But just going out and saying bluntly that "metal sucks" when metal has so many different genres, many of them sounding nothing alike, just shows me you're a close minded twit. Same goes for rap, country, pop and any other genre you can show me.

I have yet to meet a person who I'm unable to find a metal song they'll like. The entire genre is so massive, and so varied, inevitably you're going to find a song or band that you'll say "ok, I like them". Same with pop, same with country, same with any music.

[zuludelta]

I have yet to meet a person who I'm unable to find a metal song they'll like. The entire genre is so massive, and so varied, inevitably you're going to find a song or band that you'll say "ok, I like them".

True. My mum (who lives and breathes "adult contemporary" music such as Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow) actually liked a Marty Friedman (former Megadeth lead guitarist) song I made her listen to enough that she went out and bought Dragon's Tears.

[Verfall]

I have yet to meet a person who I'm unable to find a metal song they'll like. The entire genre is so massive, and so varied, inevitably you're going to find a song or band that you'll say "ok, I like them".

True. My mum (who lives and breathes "adult contemporary" music such as Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow) actually liked a Marty Friedman (former Megadeth lead guitarist) song I made her listen to enough that she went out and bought Dragon's Tears.

Mine liked the Iced Earth album "Glorious Burden", heh.

[BWPS]

Anyway, I should avoid the music threads before I start a fight.

...And Im always up for a fight, Grrrrrr  :P

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

There, in context you might see why I said that the way I did. Just "starting a fight". And also, being sarcastic. I really DON'T want to start a fight, even though I have strong feelings about certain kinds of music, I'd really rather keep them to myself because as much as I have trouble understanding it, I do realize it's subjective. Feel free to either ignore or give your reactions. Carry on.

[Midnight]

Anyway, I should avoid the music threads before I start a fight.

...And Im always up for a fight, Grrrrrr  :P

Heavy Metal sucks. So bad. And I mean the genre of music, not the movie.
The movie also sucked really bad.

There, in context you might see why I said that the way I did. Just "starting a fight". And also, being sarcastic. I really DON'T want to start a fight, even though I have strong feelings about certain kinds of music, I'd really rather keep them to myself because as much as I have trouble understanding it, I do realize it's subjective. Feel free to either ignore or give your reactions. Carry on.

I hate everything you love and will kill you in your sleep.

Oh, and I've been listening to William S. Burroughs, Dead City Radio. He does a haunting rendition of "Falling In Love Again."

[Qwazy]

HIM ~ and love said no -and- Venus Doom
(of course :P)

and before that....
Avenged Sevenfold ~ avenged sevenfold

[Figure Fan]

HIM ~ and love said no -and- Venus Doom
(of course :P)

and before that....
Avenged Sevenfold ~ avenged sevenfold

Mmm, Avenged Sevenfold.

[Verfall]

Since we mentioned metal sucking, I offer this, my 2nd favorite song from my 2nd favorite band. I'm sure those of you who use the "it's loud" excuse can't offer me that on this masterpiece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNbaGJRt25s

[Figure Fan]

My cousin loves Opeth!

See for me, it is less about the origin of the music or how original it is, and more about how it sounds to me, makes me feel, and moves me.

[zuludelta]

Listening to some OSTs...

Hajime Mizoguchi (feat. Yoko Kanno and members of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra) - Jin-Roh OST: One of my favourite animated films of all time (right up there with Miyazaki's best works), and one of the best arguments that an animated film can cover material just as well as any live-action film can. Mizoguchi writes a perfectly suited cinematic soundtrack to accompany the film, aided by the Czech Philharmonic and renowned movie and game soundtrack composer Yoko Kanno (going by her alias "Gabrielle Robin") on piano.

Media links:

Omega (ending theme)   
official movie trailer (English)

Bill Brown - The Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction OST: One of my fave superhero-themed games, it renders a perfect "Hulk Smash!" experience for fans of the angry green giant. Bill Brown's soundtrack is grand and orchestral, but I wish he could have found a way to work in some quieter, mood-setting pieces in the score (it would've been great if he could have found a way to include the "Lonely Man" end theme from the TV show in there).

Media links:

Game Intro
First mission opening sequence

[zuludelta]

Yoko Kanno - Song To Fly: Yoko Kanno, in my mind, is one of the best contemporary composers of our generation. Her work has provided the soundtrack to a whole generation raised on video games and anime, and she's authored tracks for some of the most memorable Japanese TV commercials. If you've enjoyed the music to a video game developed in Japan or anime, chances are Yoko Kanno, in some way, is affiliated with it either as a musician, a composer, or a producer. (check out her extensive discography)

Although she is classically trained, she touches on a range of musical genres in her work, from rock, to hip-hop, to electronica, jazz, pop, country, and of course, classical music (both Western and Japanese). Strangely enough, despite the sheer volume of work she's done scoring games, TV shows, and films, she only has one solo record to her credit (AFAIK), and this is 1998's Song To Fly. The music on the album is as eclectic as her more popular commercial work, going from the dark yet upbeat march of "ABC Mouse Parade" to the classical European/Japanese chanting of "Atomic Bird," to the baroque of "The Next," and the McCartney-esque pop of "Nowhere and Everywhere."

Fans of her anime and video game work might be a little surprised and underwhelmed at the contents of this album... unlike her soundtrack and score work, there isn't much of a theme to tie the music together, and it can feel a little random and disconnected at times. Still, it provides some fascinating insight into her own personal music.

Media links:

Atomic Bird
Reunion

   

[Spam]

Yes, another person who likes Yoko Kanno! I love the work she did on Cowboy Bebop. The music itself is so amazingly good on that anime, it's... it's just... stunning. I'd have to say my favorite song she composed on the anime would have to be "Blue". Astoundingly beautiful song that's inspired me over the years.

Blue

Other then that, I've been listening to At the Drive-In's EP, Vaya. Their best EP, IMO.

FORIAMSPAM!

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I am still as stunned as others might be after reading this: I am currently very much into the Puscifer album, V is for [UH OH! Not on this forum ;)].  If one gives it a decent listen and suspends one's judgment about the subject matter--which, on the face of things, strikes one as a demeaning, sexist male treatment of women as objects of desire--one rediscovers Maynard James Keenan's lyrical precision and wordplay on tracks such as "[UH OH! Not on this forum ;)] Mine" (which features a bit of gender bending (built into the ambiguity of "mine") in the midst of what appears to be a struggle for domination--who wins?), an Oedipal triangle in "Momma Sed," and a profane (in all senses of the word) take on the second coming in "Rev 22:20."  What MJK sacrifices in vocal range by effecting (or perhaps accentuating?) a hillbilly blues drawl bass-baritone I believe he makes up for in these tightly constructed (though groovy-smooth) numbers, which afford him an opportunity to step away from the trademark tool staccato and slip into something more Wild Turkey-ish yet genius-grade at the same time.

If you are willing to see the crass brand name marketing campaign and graphic imagery for what it perhaps is--namely, an opportunity to explore the instability of male regimes that rest upon the broken and fetishised female body (regimes which also include certain organised religions, as MJK seems to suggest)--then you might want to give this record a spin.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat