#also!!! the version of insanity on spotify is the original but i put a piano cover on the youtube version of the playlist | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

soundsof71 · 3 years

Note

Hey! Album: 'Fleetwood Mac' (1975) - Fleetwood Mac

Hey! Great to hear from you! You (and your previous blog) were my original inspiration for trying to raise my tumblr game to something intentionally curated, and more than that, personally creative. Sorry to have let you down. LOL

What a pleasure to talk about this one, though, an album I think is -- strangely enough -- one of the most underrated albums in the classic rock pantheon!

What’s that you say? An album with “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” underrated?!?! Well it’s true, seriously underrated, at least partly because those two stellar, nay, legendary songs are the first ones that most people think of. There's so much more! It's definitely my favorite Fleetwood Mac album!

My perspective is a little different than the standard rap that Fleetwood Mac didn't properly begin until those two California kids joined the band in 1975, because to me, they started taking off when their first American joined the band, Bob Welch in 1971 for Future Games, which I wrote about at some length here.

(For the record, Future Games is my second favorite Fleetwood Mac album. Anyone who hasn't checked it out really needs to.)

I’ll leave it at that for now, except to observe that to most of my music nerd friends at the time, I was a latecomer to Fleetwood Mac the band, having completely missed their earlier, bluesier lineups. Indeed, the 1971 lineup was their 8th! And they'd come to #9 in 1972, before landing on lineup #10 in 1975.

They had a bunch of hits on the five albums in this 71-74 range (”Hypnotized” is one that still slays me) that I think hold up as among their best ever. While the album before Fleetwood Mac, Heroes Are Hard to Find didn’t have a hit single, it rose to #34 on the US charts, and got plenty of attention.

My point is that Fleetwood Mac didn’t spring into existence out of nowhere in 1975. Nor was 1975 necessarily ground zero for the millions of people who bought the album Fleetwood Mac. It came out in the summer of ‘75, but took 15 months to hit #1 in the US! (It peaked at #11 in the UK.) This was a far bigger album in 1976 when all the singles came out, and the band was touring like crazy to support it.

They basically dragged the album to the top of the charts kicking and screaming by the end of THAT year with relentless touring, setting the stage for their true commercial breakthrough with Rumours in 1977, but artistically? I prefer everything about 1975′s Fleetwood Mac.

btw, the music nerds know that Fleetwood Mac was recorded at Sound City Studios, which makes all the difference in the telling of the tale. In 1974, the band had located to Los Angeles, and following the departure of Bob Welch in December, Mick Fleetwood went looking for both a recording studio and a guitarist.

While getting to know producer Keith Olsen at Sound City (a studio legendary for its drum sound, among other things), Keith played Mick some tracks from an album he’d recorded here a couple of years earlier with a local guitarist and his girlfriend singer, both of whom were also songwriters.

Mick said, I’ll book the studio to record my next album, I’ll book you to produce, and I’ll hire the guitarist....who famously informed Mick that he and his girlfriend were a package deal. All of this happened because of Sound City Studios.

(Here's Mick recording this very album in this very studio.)

Your friend and mine Dave Grohl directed a FANTASTIC documentary about Sound City Studios, a kind of a dump to be honest, but where tons of phenomenal records were made, from After The Gold Rush to Caribou, Damn The Torpedoes, Nevermind, Rage Against The Machine, and most recently, Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher. Lots and lots of stories about the making of Fleetwood Mac in this movie, and much more.

Here’s the trailer. The whole movie is available on YT, too! And Amazon Prime, and a bunch of other places. HIGHLY recommended!

youtube

So here we go taking directly about Fleetwood Mac.....

the first song from the album i heard: "Over My Head". This was the first single released in the US, remarkably, four months after the album was released! I dunno, did the label not want to sell any albums? Or did they just not get how catchy these tunes were? I have no idea.

And ironically, the band didn't like the choice of "Over My Head" at all, ranking it dead-last in their own considerations of likely singles! I think that this is evidence that they were using heavy drugs much earlier than we thought. LOL

"Over My Head" peaked at #20 in the US, their highest to date by far, although, in some defense of the band's reservations, didn't chart at all in the UK. Saying that it rose to "only" 20 in the charts doesn't begin to describe how heavily it was played, though. A LOT.

do i own the album: Did then, Spotify now. The answer for most of the albums in this round of Asks. :-)

my favorite song: "Over My Head". Look, I admit that this is insane when Fleetwood Mac also includes "Landslide" and "Rhiannon." "Landslide" in particular is maybe one of the greatest songs anyone has ever written, and every single person reading this knows somebody named Rhiannon because of that song. (I've met two.) And hey, "Say You Love Me" was a MUCH bigger hit at the time too... but I'm tellin' ya, "Over My Head" fucks.

It's the single version that fucks hardest, though, no doubt about it. I was disappointed when I finally bought the album that the version there fades in (NO! THIS IS WRONG) and has a wide mix that diffuses the impact. The radio version is so tight that it's practically mono, and it punches you right upside the head.

One of my favorite things about listening to "Over My Head" in the past couple of weeks for this Ask is that it's Old School Fleetwood Mac. Chris on piano, Mick on drums, and John McVie with what might be the best bassline that anyone stroked out in 1975. My god, it's a fucking monster, and it just gets hotter as the song progresses. By the end, it's on fire, and you hear it so much better in this tight single mix.

The new guy adds a nice little solo on top of a nice rhythm lick, and he and Stevie add background vocals, but they're not front and center. "Over My Head" is really Christine McVie's showcase, although Fleetwood and Mac really shine too. This would have been a monster hit without the new kids, as indeed it pretty much was. You could say the same thing about "Say You Love Me", which is also all about Christine's songcraft, and a voice like no other, then or now.

Here's my edit of a lovely Mick Putland photo of Christine McVie from a couple of years earlier.

I guarantee that it's been way too long since you heard the in-your-face single version of "Over My Head". On Spotify, you can find it on the couple of Deluxe Editions of Fleetwood Mac (here's one), and it's also on the anthology, The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac, which I've embedded here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-lIt1ILzk

youtube

least favorite song: "I'm So Afraid." I'm so afraid not. LOL

a song I didn’t like at first, but now do: Hmm, I might put "Sugar Daddy" in that category, but honestly, the main thing I don't like about this song is the title. LOL But it's the 4th best Christine McVie song on an album where the best three of hers were all released as singles, so I guess it all works out.

a song I used to like, but now don’t: Anything by the new guy. I'm not going to go into detail here because what I love about this album, I still love. At the time, I dug two of his songs here (you can guess which two, surely), but I started to really despise this guy a few years later. Now, I can't listen to anything where he's prominent at all, on any Fleetwood Mac records.

Fortunately there are more than enough Christine and Stevie songs, and Mick and John's playing, plus all those earlier albums like Future Games, to keep Fleetwood Mac in the rock good pantheon. I'd have fired the new guy 30 years earlier than he was.

favorite lyric:

Mirror in the sky

What is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin'

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Like I said, the two Stevie Nicks tracks on Fleetwood Mac deserve every bit of the love they've gotten over the years. You can also see with just a quick glance around my blog that she's one of my most-posted artists. Please don't take me repping Christine as any disrespect for Stevie!

Do I like "Landslide" a little more than I otherwise might because it's specifically about outgrowing the aforementioned new guy? Maybe. Or do I like it a little less than I otherwise might because I can't hear it without thinking of him? Maybe that too.

overall rating out of 10: Then: 9.4. Now: 9. The new guy went 2-for-4 for my money at the time, and the two that he whiffed on are genuinely terrible...but as bad as those two clunkers were, the rest of the album seemed perfect to me. Certainly among my most-played mainstream rock records into the early 80s. I was perfectly fine skipping one song on each side.

Even though nowadays I can't stand any of the songs he sings lead on, you take those off, and you STILL have "Landslide", "Rhiannon", "Say You Love Me", "Over My Head", and "Warm Ways". No album with ALL THOSE on them gets less than an 8.5, right?

I'm adding a few tenths each for how tightly Fleetwood and Mac are locked into each other and these songs on rythm (easily the most underrated duo of the era, sez me), and Keith Olsen's immaculate production. The score of 9 is therefore objectively correct and mathematically unassailable. LOL

I'm going to end where I began, by talking about Christine McVie. Instead of listening to this first and foremost as an album with a couple of giant Stevie Nicks songs, listen again to Fleetwood Mac as Christine McVie really lighting things up. She deserves so much more credit for the band's success than she gets, and seriously, "Over My Head" fucks.

Now looky here, @aluacrescente . I know that YOU have strong feelings about this record, so spill! And the rest of you, too! I don't intend to have the last word on the albums in any of these Asks! Just the first one. :-) So lemme know what YOU think!

PS. Apologies for any formatting weirdness! I started this on desktop, where I do all my writing, saved the first few paragraphs to come back to later, only to be told by tumblr that I'd stated this on the app (DID NOT) and could only edit there. Grrr. Not cool, @staff. I've spent another day just tweaking to make it somewhat readable and wondering how these people can be so bad at their jobs. LOL

My crackpot opinions and wobbly writing are my own of course, and I'm aware that they have a larger negative impact on readability than tumblr's incompetence by far. LOL

#aluacrescente #ask #Fleetwood Mac #christine mcvie #women in rock #stevie nicks #Landslide #over my head #john mcvie #dave grohl #sound city #youtube #essay #me #recording studio

43 notes · View notes

sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 3 years

Text

Cyprus brings shampoo to Rotterdam 2021

youtube

I FELL IN LOVE, I FELL IN LOVE, I GAVE MY HEART TO PRODUCT PLACEMENT.

Though I do see where they come from. Everyone from Panik Records, from her to Eleni Foureira featuring Perfectil on the “Fuego” MV, gonna need that sweet sweet money all of the time. But has Greece’s economy not really recovered for them to constantly need to advertise products on music videos or am I just losing my mind overthinking things?

Eitherway, this review may or may not appear before or during their rehearsal day, so see how do I make a fool of myself by trying to estimate Cyprus’s chances!

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

This year we have a 26 year old Elena Tsagrinou from Greece here (the way they were last represented by a somewhat Cypriot on 2017?). She did music early on in her age, also participated in the Greek version of Got Talent. Though, before breaking out as a solo pop sensation in ways you cannot imagine, she used to be in a pop band OtherView. Strangely enough, I’ve heard of them because of this song below but I could’ve NEVER estimated it was her and never could have I predicted she would land herself a Eurovision entrance all alone:

youtube

The band has had quite a few successful enough singles with her, she did some music shows participation and hosting, her band switched labels midway through (guess into which one they eventually landed, hint: some of the screenshots in this review have this peculiar logo), and in 2018, she had to “withdraw” from the group to go ahead and pursue the aforementioned solo career, somewhat. She continued doing a lot of shows (particularly seen on the MAD music channel related events), and doesn’t have as many singles as she had with OtherView right now, but she’s possibly well on her way to blossom as an artiste. Some of those reading (lol who am I kidding who even reads these) may be familiar with this little song of hers:

youtube

You’ve heard way too many things about “El Diablo”, her 2021 entry, so idk if I feel like explaining the technical side of things all by myself or you already know everything. But in these reviews I repeat everyone else regardless, so let me just say that “El Diablo” is an obvious pop song, with a lot of Swedish related touches to it, because at least one person on this song also worked on Alvaro Estrella’s Melodifestivalen 2021 entry that glorifies at least a handful of the same cliches that “El Diablo” does lyrically. Dear Eurovision lyricists, you can use more foreign languages than Spanish for your obligatory foreign language incorporations, thanks~

Although I’m not sure about whether it is more Laurell Barker’s fault as much as it is Joker Thörnfeldt’s, but it’s easier to blame them equally, because the former probably came up with “ta-taco, tamale” and the latter couldn’t get enough of the word “mamacita” they used for the aforementioned Melodifestivalen entry. Anyway, the lyrics, from what I get, is that she’s in love with an eeeevil guy because he’s sweet talking her, they do some sexy stuff together (presumably), pour sauce on their bodies for no explicit reason other than “obligatory-foreign-reference-itis”, she’s breaking the rules (and idk if it was “mama-mamacita” telling her to do it), got the icy edges that the spicy is melting for her, throws eyelashes on the floor when she’s got no wigs to throw (but that doesn’t matter because even without a wig, she can flip her hair and make him look twice), and there’s as much as you need to know about the song’s lyrics as I feel like I should show to you, because eh. Eurovision has suffered from worse cookie-cutter lyricism through the years, “El Diablo” is painful but not the worst.

REVIEW

But I do like the song somewhat!

“El Diablo” was initially compared to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” upon release, and I totally kind of see why, because in all the right spots you can absolutely hum over the chorus to that over the one of “El Diablo”’s, it just exchanges gratuitous French translation of one of the already sung lines on the bridge for obligatory inserted Spanish terms just for the sake of being trendy with the crowds of the nowadays, because as we learned nothing these days, having a lot of Spanish in your song is apparently trendy. And Elena does nothing absolutely batshit insane on the music video (other than advertising) - no lapdance for the devil Lil Nas X style, no being forced into a bath, no person to sell her body to (not even the titular diablo), no dancers that rise out of their Christian sleep pods. Just Elena singing behind lots and lots of trash bin bag wrap.

Honestly the bigger issue for me than the song being “sAtAnIc because it is called “the DEVIL!!!”, aside from the lyrics, is that the MV does not come with any forewarning whatsoever for the people that are seizure prone when they see strobe lights? And that happens for some extended periods of this clip? I know you are indulged in your advertising and good for you but don’t just care for the companies that pay you if you use their products, do care about people’s wellbeings too, sometime.

But enough about the MV.

The song is decently sounding. It has interesting uses of what sounds like hi-hats during the verses (e.g.: a moment when this happens for the first time on the song is after Elena sings “tonight we’re gonna burn in a par-tY” the second time, and then there’s something that sounds soaring - that’s what I think that the hi-hats did.). It also has some sort of a synth piano on the second verse to boost the song’s sound rather than just relying on 808s and beats. I quite like how the chorus is so instant somehow, idk why but it is for me. Might have a gripe with that childish choir singing “I LOVE EL DIAB-LO” in the tune of standard kindergarten children teasing tune (aka ”NA NA NA BOO BOO”), as well as the constant breathing sounds, but they don’t distract me from generally “fucking” with this song, lol. It’s just that likeable imo.

I just can’t cope with the fact that Cyprus can’t seem to dare to go at least a little bit original with their song, yanno? Ever since 2019 they were called out as being a ripoff of something... hell, everyone since 2016 except Eleni was a ripoff of something. Alter Ego? “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers. Gravity? “Human” by Rag’n’Bone Man. Replay? “Fuego” itself. Running? “Lose Control”, Meduza x Becky Hill. Now we have a Lady Gaga song wannabe that even caught the attention of another singer that the music video looked like it was ripping off, and the Eurofandom caught up in hysterics:

Heads up, folks: not EVERY short haired blonde with messy hair, silvery tank top and shortpants that writhes on the floor is a Zara Larsson clone. And I don’t know who stirred controversy first - her or the fans - but this was ridiculous to see, even for me.

Although for a second I saw where they were coming from.

Now see why I want Cyprus to go original for at least once? Because I guess that the way “Fuego” was conjured up, it brought Cyprus so much success with how the package was, how Eleni sold it, and how the song sounded. You know the first thing of everything potentially going wrong for you later on is if you find the formula you’ve been looking for, but you proceed to be using the exact same formula that got you this far in the first place, without realizing what was it in the formula that you needed to bank on to further to make it click, but instead proceed to copy everything like it was an easy, fill-in-the-blank form. You can and should do better than that.

Though that doesn’t stop me from ranking it 11th this year.

Thing is, I really expected it to be the one female pop song of the year I would have the constant impulsive need to replay, replay, yeah. Ever since the chaotic entry MV drop that occured on some random-ass Cypriot TV show where three guys talked a lot (and before that, we got a cooking show), and kept growing increasingly agitated that no one is liking their show, until at some point one of them erupted in “IN TWU MEENETS... EL DIABLO... ON UR TEEVEE”; I was really devastated I couldn’t be able to break the replay button because of Panik Records deciding to rather benefit for themselves to have the MV on their app, then on Youtube, THEN on Spotify in that order. So I listened to a few video rips that I received / had for myself, and it was a fun time... until I realized the desire to play it declined much faster than I thought it would when it actually dropped on Spotify, oops. So I can’t really let myself rank it higher, when there are at least some catchier female bangers with better overall sound, better lyrics, and better multiple-replay factor. But I can’t really settle for a much lower rank for her than 11th, anyway. Girlbanger 2021 power y’all!

That and vocally she’s actually not that bad, even if she has shown up singing her song drunk in a handful of Instastories for some event of some party house, and at the time people overreacted, but I think that at least a large audience of those same people has collectively dropped their “Cyprus obvious NQ” talks come the pre-parties.

youtube

Panik Records, when will you put the yeehaw El Diablo on streaming? Now THAT’S a version that has replay value, and I might never get bored of it instead :(

Approval factor: Yeah, there exists some for me in it Follow-up factor: CyBC did one of the nastiest in terms of following up their 2020 arc of “Bring Your Artist Back for Revenge Year” that was 2021, straight up ditching Sandro probably right after Eurovision was done (well it doesn’t look like the case because CyBC published a statement later, but I sense that it might’ve been the case), because “Running” wasn’t doing so well with the “YAS QUEEN” branch of the Eurofandom. Which sucks because Sandro would’ve actually been down to be asked again for Eurovision, as he revealed it to NikkieTutorials during many of her interviews with last year’s class of. “Agreement from both parties” my ass, unless Sandro secretly realized that like Tom Leeb, he was too busy for 2021 Eurovision, which I doubt. It actually sucks imo that Sandro can probably be considered as even a forever non-returnee, because Sandro is more of German roots than Greek, and if we learned anything about the Mukuchyangate 2021, is that Germany will never send a returning artist, at least one that didn’t represent their country first and foremost. So Greece could only ask Sandro nicely only if the contest comes on to Germany, I guess? How do you think they decided on getting Stefania, who still ever so regularly appears on Dutch music, to represent them this year? So on that regard the follow-up from CyBC stinks, eventhough I think that entrywise the follow-up was rather decent, at least in the usual Cypriot way of sending female pop (going from “Replay” to “El Diablo” which I like more than “replay”), and eventhough I’m falling out of the hype for Cyprus I once used to have, their 2015-2021 entry streak had entries that I largely feel positive for overall, so in that regard, the follow up is decent. Qualification factor: In a year of Semi 1 Female Banger Slaughterhouse, Elena goes out in my eyes with several scratches, but not enough to completely kill her chances. If anything, given the divisiveness of Ireland’s rehearsals, Elena is likely to obliterate any last memory of Lesley Roy any first time viewer has ever had, except for her stage graphics. Even if Elena’s staging will not be as mindblowingly cartooney as the last, once a bop comes on, everyone forgets the slower song and gives into the bop, at least that’s how the draws work when choosing what insignificant song to put on 2nd and wedge in between the opening banger and some lesser-key banger, right? I know that “Replay” barely qualified, but I find “El Diablo” slightly better, and it all goes well, it will barely just as qualify as well. Because in a Semi 1 Female Banger Slaughterhouse, she can’t be the losing one, really.

INTERNAL CORNER

I already told everything that was noteworthy about Elena’s journey in previous sections, honestly.

• That I said that CyBC likely ditched Sandro right after cancellation just like Hooverphonic ditched “Release Me” should they have had a chance to keep or toss their entry. It doesn’t present itself as the case, but I just feel like it is.

• That the song was revealed on a Cypriot talkshow where three dudes were aware that we were waiting for “El Diablo”, trying to throw some gratuitous English our way, hating that we didn’t like our show, but promising that “El Diablo” MV will be shown in “TWU MEENETS”, which wasn’t but worth the wait eh?

• That people were cackling at Zara Larsson joining in the talks of Elena’s MV having aspects of her own song’s MV plagiarized.

• That Elena performed her song in a private-ish event when drunk and having heaps of fun and people cried that it was gonna be a NQ.

And do I really need to elaborate about the local Cypriot church scandal? It just so happened that a bunch of people read into a song’s title so much, thought it was rude of their country to sing about the devil (eventhough the bigger offenses made here is the gratuitous Spanish more than anything), and hoped that the broadcaster will disqualify the very song they okayed to be internally chosen because they are displeased with it - and if it’s not disqualified, they even threatened to burn the headquarters down. No, really. That’s like the most amusing part of that whole spectacle. Imagine burning a broadcaster headquarters down for a song... if I did it for every favourite of mine that lost to other broadcasters, the broadcasters would run out of locations to rent, because everything else good is pre-occupied or the ashes of their lost headquarters staring back at them.

Imagine being toxicly Christian in 2021... How long until Elena’s face gets photoshopped on the main protagoniste of The Unholy?

ANY LAST WORDS?

Even if I’m with this song, part of me kind of wants me to fail to make Cyprus realize that their formula is starting to wear thin and they got to be somewhat of a versatile nation in Eurovision if they want to be on the radar of not just one specific niche. But then again, they learned nothing when they flopped with Tamta, because she sneakily qualified as opposed to failing even harder than Tulia, ah well. Will they ever learn?

But why would I openly wish this to a top 11 song of mine, oh dear. Good luck Elena, may God be on your side, I guess. :P

#eurovision #eurovision 2021 #rotterdam 2021 reviews #cyprus #elena tsagrinou #el diablo

5 notes · View notes

grimelords · 6 years

Photo

My July playlist is here, just in time for September! Four hours of hits from Lana Del Rey, Iannis Xenakis, KISS, Cameo and everyone in between. Please enjoy.

This Is What Makes Us Girls - Lana Del Rey: This is a really underrated Lana song I think. It's such a beautiful song and it's so heartbreaking the way she sings "they were the only friends I ever had". It's like an origin story for her whole thing detailing how she got bitten by a radioactive pabst, I love it.

Walking Into Sunshine (Larry Levan 12" Mix) - Central Line: A powerful good mood song that quickly takes on a vibe shift near the end when he says I've got to do it now, I've got to walk into the sun' which carries a different meaning than 'walk into the sunshine' to me. Embracing positivity versus self immolation in a nuclear furnace.

Fine di Cobb - Stelvio Cipriani: This is the most jamming harpsichord I think I have ever heard. This is from the soundtrack to an italian cop film called Mark il Poliziotto (Mark The Narc) that I found in a spotify playlist called Best Of Eurocrime that I cannot recommend enough. https://open.spotify.com/user/cinevox/playlist/1o3c0Con0ormlKc9r1gqxgSince

Last Wednesday - Highasakite: Highasakite might be the worst band name I've ever heard and they're so lucky this song is as good as it is that it cancels that out.

Hilary $wank - Joey Bada$$: I was originally just going to post the instrumental of this because the beat it just so, so good. So busy without being cluttered and nicely melodic without clouding the space for the vocals. I also like this song a lot because just by virtue of being so upbeat it escapes the worst parts of a lot of other Joey Bada$$ 'real hip hop' type songs that are going for a throwback vibe but end up just sounding dated.

Girls - Royal Headache: Girls! Think they're too fine for me! Oh Girls! And I'm inclined to agree!

Something To Tell You - Haim: I'm slowly coming around to Haim's second album and I've finally decided it's good actually. I just hope they do a live album or something soon because their songs are so tightly structured that I think it's almost to their detriment, and every live video I've seen of them they really pull them apart and expand them in a nice organic way that just doesn't come through on the album.

Lavender - BadBadNotGood & Kaytranada: I can't tell whether I like this orginal version or the Nightfall remix with Snoop Dogg better, the verses are just regular Snoop but the vocals they put on the chorus are so good I sort of wish there was a third version that was just them with some other rapper.

New Seeds - Boards Of Canada: Realising that the sound at the start of this is extrapolated from mobile phone interference was a shocking moment for me.

Alligator Engine - Hunters & Collectors: Hunters And Collectors early albums where they sounded like the Talking Heads of the Mad Max universe don't get enough respect because of their huge regular sounding hits a few albums later and it's areal shame because this song is pure primal funk.

Fly Like An Eagle - Seal: This is the song that plays on the little muzak speakers in the cryogenic chamber for the four minutes you're still conscious while your body cools to absolute zero. Then you wake up in 400 years still humming it.

Come To Dust - Boards Of Canada: I was having such a huge moment with this album this month and lamenting the imminent end of our favourite earth The Earth, and this is really such a peaceful sort of resolute song right near the end of the album before the real ending of Semena Mertvykh makes you feel like a body dumped in the desert for scientific research into the nature of decomposition.

Kiss You All Over - Millie Jackson: I'm still not sure how I feel about this new Millie Jackson album that's old multitracks re-mixed by Steve Levine. The whole thing sounds kind of whack. What's good however, is when she adlibs "I wanna bite you on the ankles baby" out of nowhere near the end, and then says "on the ankles.. on the kneecaps.." as the song's fading out.

The Sorcerer - Twain: My girlfriend sent me this song and I have no idea where she found it but I love it. As soon as I heard the opening line I was completely hooked. It's such a beautiful and foreboding song that I really can't get a proper read on, I love it.

Men Today - Health: I'm looking for a chrome extension that makes this song play at maximum volume whenever anyone makes a post containing the phrase 'men today'. Huge wall of noise. Bloodthirsty drums. All the dirt owns us now, what we were ends in the ground.

Where Love Lives - Frankie Knuckles: I'm eagerly awaiting the day coming soon that 90s piano house goes from naff to revered and rockets back up the charts.

Nein König Nein - DJ Koze: This is the B side to Seeing Aliens off of DJ Koze's new album and I really love it, mostly for the groove it get into about halfway through, it reminds me of High Fidelity by Daft Punk where it's just chopped to hell and builds these sort of disparate rhythmic cuts into a really melodic frankenstein.

Blush - Leon Vynehall: I think I found this song and the next one by Spotify Radio off of the DJ Koze song above. I got into a real groove at work one day and these two were the best two to come out of it. The bassline/strings melody that centres this whole song is so good and so circular it could feasibly play for two hours and I wouldn't notice.

Last Land - John Talabot: The way the vocal sample just keeps bleeding into itself is hypnotising here, and it's also maybe the best and most unique kick sound I've heard in a long time.

Suzinak - Ross From Friends: I almost feel bad for Ross From Friends because he's making some really amazing music but he's stuck with this dogshit soundcloud name. The Durutti Column sample that forms the basis of this song is really nicely placed without just feeling like a rip-off, but where this song really shines is in the last minute or so where it magically transitions into a crunching guitar driven thing that sounds like it's playing next door.

Canary Yellow - Deafheaven: The most incredible thing about this album is the sense of optimism that pervades it. This isn't a genre that really lends itself to hope or beauty but somehow Deafheaven have captured it in a way I didn't really think possible. It feels like they've expanded the emotional palette of the whole genre with this album, without sacrificing any of what makes it great.

Strutter - Kiss: I had this song stuck in my head the other day, but I'd remembered it wrong and had it mixed up with the chorus of Lovers And Sinners by Dallas Crane. In my version he's saying 'strutter' the way they say 'lovers'. There's an incredible song in there somewhere, but the original is pretty good too.

Lovers And Sinners - Dallas Crane: See above I guess. It's interesting listening to Dallas Crane now as a new generation is reappraising and being inspired by pub rock all over again and somehow the difference between Dallas Crane and Jet versus Bad//Dreems and Peep Tempel couldn't be more pronounced despite their shared roots. Where the former idolises the glamour of a bygone age of rock and roll the latter are reapprorating it in a more directly emotional, less flashy way.

Evryali - Iannis Xenakis: From what I understand from reading the wiki article on this piece this was generated by doing about five different kinds of extreme nerd graph maths and then turning that into music via more maths and when he finally turned up with the completed score it was so fucking stupid it had notes that don't physically exist on a standard piano in it. Now that's rock and roll. It's hard to make sense of this without the context of its composition because it feels incredibly random, but this performance by Stephnos Thomopoulos really brings meaning to the total chaos of it. I think solo piano is such a good medium for generative-type works like this because it feels like the simplest way to see everything happening without the tonal clutter of synthesised or orchestral sounds muddying the already extremely muddy waters.

Easy Way Out - Money For Rope: I love bands with two drummers and Money For Rope really know how to use two drummers, which is simply use them exactly like you would one drummer but pan them left and right so I can hear when they do different fills at the same time and get a thrill. A really good song about killing yourself when you're old(?)

Sophisticated Lady - Art Tatum: I've been having a big Art Tatum phase recently and it's hard to overstate just how much I believe Art Tatum came from another planet to teach us about the piano. He is really and truly from another dimension. So off the charts insanely good at making a whole universe from a simple tune. It's like every single note gets its own full trip around the block before he moves on.

Stay As Sweet As You Are - Art Tatum: This is an absolute odyssey in five minutes. Without ever losing focus, or losing track of the central theme, it's like he takes it apart piece by piece and reassembles it anew every single bar right before your eyes.

No Line On The Horizon - U2: 2000s U2 gets a bad rap, and it's mostly deserved but there's still some very good stuff in there. This song is so good, and so nicely produced it's a real shame that it opens the album that eventually contains Get On Your Boots.

Tools Down - The Presets: Not only is this song great, but they use the exact same synth sound as the one they used for Madeline's voice in Celeste, which has the nice side effect of making it seem like Madeline is singing along to this great song.

Open Sesame (12" Version) - Kool & The Gang: I've definitely put this on my list before but this is probably the best song ever recorded. It's incredible top to bottom for all 9 minutes and never fails to put me in a great mood.

Peril - Martin O'Donnell: I was thinking about the Halo 2 soundtrack and was shocked to remember correctly that this strange Enya knock-off made it into the highest selling game of 2004.

Drumgasm - Weiss/Cameron/Hill: I cannot belive I haven't heard of this album before now. It's Janet Weiss from Sleater-Kinney, Matt Cameron from Pearl Jam and Zach Hill all playing drums for 40 minutes and it's incredible. I would never have expected Weiss and Cameron to be the sort of drummers to do something like this, but they absolutely nail it. The different styles of the three really meld well and they all seem to lead at different times. This album is the sort of thing that seems like it would be extremely exhausting, and probably would be in most circumstances but somehow they pulled it off. It's engaging and for the most part, driven, purposeful music with direction; which is saying a lot for an album of three drummers just going absolutely hard as motherfuckers for most of an hour.

Apollo - St Paul & The Broken Bones: I love this song but the way he sings the first line makes me laugh because it sounds almost exactly like Drew Tarver's Donny Gary character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ArjvUUptw and I'm blessed to have this song about reusing mcdonalds cups play in my head every single time I'm in a mcdonalds.

Million Times Alone - Bad//Dreems: This is maybe the best song about working night shift and having depression I've ever heard. The part about sleeping in the day in the bright sun in a boiling hot house is an especially vicious sense memory for me.

Slow Mover - Angie McMahon: My girlfriend showed me this and I absolutely love it. I also feel extremely old because I just googled it and apparently it's an Unearthed song that made the Hottest 100 this year and I didn't even notice. The best approximation I can make of how I feel about this song is the google autocomplete when you google it that goes 'angie mcmagon slow mover meaning?' and the top comment on the Genius page for it that says 'I cried my eyes out when I first heard this song.’

Drop The Bomb (feat. MF DOOM) - YOTA: Youth Of The Apocalypse: This is the new band from the non-Clash guitarist and bassist from Gorillaz, as well as Jamie Reynolds from Klaxons and I'm so glad it exists because the new Gorillaz album was such a snore and this really feels like what it should have been. Somehow it seems Damon Albarn is not the thing that makes Gorillaz great, it's the other guys which is very very strange.

Word Up - Cameo: Mostly thinking about this song because of Carl Tart's extremely good episode of Comedy Bang Bang where he spoke in the cadence of this and the other Cameo song for the whole episode https://www.earwolf.com/episode/word-down/

Lee - Tenacious D: I don't know what's going on but I got into a real Tenacious D thing this month. Thinking deeply about comedy music for some reason. Anyway this song is so much fun and it reminds me of Tony's Theme by Pixies.

Tony's Theme - Pixies: I love the idea of writing a nonsense song about your friend Tony, who you love, to put right in the middle of your otherwise pretty serious alt rock album. If you know any other songs in the genre of Lee and Tony's Theme please reply and tell me them because I think it's really funny genre.

Burning Down The House - Tom Jones & The Cardigans: I woke up one morning with the sound of Tom Jones singing 'strange but not a stranger' in my head and it took me so much googling to find out it was this version of Burning Down The House that I was thinking of, without having heard it in probably ten years. I like that this song is ostensibly a duet but Nina Persson has such a thin voice and Tom Jones is the most powerful man to have ever lived that she's sort of just automatically relegated to backing vocals by default.

Horseshoe Crabs - Hop Along: I heard about this from the Jason Mantzoukas What's In My Bag video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfWVhz-wyc. I cannot believe how her voice sounds, it's just incredible. The way she sings "baby's heading home" at the start shocked me, it sounds like recordings of three different people cut together. It's just amazing. I already loved this song a lot and then when I looked into it I found out it's about Jackson C. Frank and it made me cry.

Long Wat - Khun Narin: This is another one I got from the Jason Mantzoukas What's In My Bag video, it's a Thai pschedelic street band and it's quite simply the jam of a lifetime.

listen here

#playlists

44 notes · View notes

fiothelemon · 5 years

Text

december 15, 2018 takenobu mitsuyoshi 光吉猛修

If you’ve ever played a 90′s era SEGA game, then you may recognize the work of Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. Takenobu has produced music on games such as Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, and even Shenmue. Whatever game he takes part in, it always gives me both a smile on my face, and makes me enjoy the game waaay more. Today on the first issue of FBoGCaTW, we look at my all time favorite video game composer: Takenobu Mitsuyoshi!

history

Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was born on Christmas of 1967 in the Fukuoka prefecture of Japan. Because of his father’s work, he moved around the country until they finally settled in Chiba, and then later in Sendai when he was in his second year of high school.

When Takenobu was in his elementary and middle school days, he despised music, music class, and anything relating to music theory. Despite the dislike of music, he did enjoy singing and singing popular anime theme songs from back then (that isn’t too different nowadays for him). One other thing he liked during elementary school was baseball, ending it while he was wrapping up his middle school days. Why he left is because when Takenobu began high school he started attending his school’s science club in search for something other than sports. In that science club, there were NEC PC-8001s in the class that could play music and this impressed takenobu, along with screwing with synthesizers. Of course, the science club did not 100% spark Takenobu’s musical interest. the band “Yellow Magic Orchestra” was a huge influence on him and also helped him build his fascination of music.

When Takenobu went out to college, he majored in economics, out of all things. He was considering a teaching job, but then he got a real taste of what being a teacher was like when he attended classes. But college is where he both joined several bands, and discovered SEGA, and thus aspired to work there when a friend showed him Galaxy Force. In an interview with Game Music Core, Takenobu said:

“Actually, I also attended a Sega job fair meeting, though it was for their business and administration positions, not games development. At the meeting, I was surprised when someone else raised their hand and asked “I want to do sound at Sega, how can I apply for that? [...] ”I remember they replied, “Just send in your demo tape.” -Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

Keep in mind that Takenobu was there for things such as business, and if it weren’t for that one guy... then we wouldn’t have his classic music now. And taking what that guy said in mind, Takenobu took work on producing a demo tape to show to SEGA, and produced 2 instrumental songs. All played by hand and using a multitrack recorder with sequenced drums. Takenobu had always had an interest in game music, so he also applied to other game companies such as Namco, Taito, Konami, and SNK. (Huh, the Daytona USA guy coulda done the music for Metal Slug!!) During the application for the other companies, Takenobu received an “unofficial offer” by SEGA, and the story of when he was tested on his skills deserves a paragraph to its own.

“Their entrance test was insane, too! They had an electric piano setup in the interview room, and they said, ‘Please listen to this melody. You will have 5 minutes to come up with an arrangement.’ [...] After that, I had to meet with the business managers, but my head was all muddled and I blurted out that I’d received an unofficial offer from SEGA.” -Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

In retrospect, he said how he should have backpedaled and was teetering on accepting the offer or not. Instead, he said to the interviewers how he “Just wanted to learn more about your company.” Even though this left them baffled, Takenobu was hired and for almost 30 years (since 1990), he has taken part in games such as Daytona USA, which he has particular fond memories of. The Virtua Fighter series (including the anime, oddly enough), Yakuza, and plenty more that I don’t have much time to mention here.

takenobu, seen on the right, in his early days of joining sega

music showcase

The first track of Takenobu’s I wanna show y’all that I think describes his style beautifully is an exclusive to an album he put out in 2003 called “From Loud 2 Low: Takenobu Mitsuyoshi Works.” It features mostly famous songs he made for famous SEGA games, but an extra 2 songs of the album are an exception, though. They were made only for the album, and weren’t featured in any SEGA game. One is called “Night In H.A.P.” and the other is “I Feel So Good…”

“I Feel So Good…”

“I Feel So Good…” shows a good example of what I like to call “Mitsuyoshi-ism.” I define it as cheery music based on jazz fusion, that also feature upbeat, optimistic vocals. A few other notable songs by Mitsuyoshi that display mitsuyoshi-ism well are some of his songs in Daytona USA such as “Sky High” or the famous “Let’s Go Away.” In case you enjoy this track, a lot like me, this and the album it was originally from are available on Apple Music and Spotify!

Speaking of Daytona USA…

This is “Sky High” from Daytona USA, released in 1993 for the SEGA Model 2 arcade board. Since it’s an arcade game from the time, that would explain the choppy vocals and sampled instruments. Nevertheless, Takenobu shines bright in this song with his signature singing and flexes his composing muscles. If this version of the song isn’t doing it for you, I don’t blame you. There was a SEGA Saturn version of the game released a year after the original, and it improves aaaaalllmost everything about the game, including music. Here is the cover made for the Saturn.

“Course Select”

When he first joined SEGA in 1990, one of the first games Takenobu was tasked with scoring for was Virtua Racing. It was made by the same development team as Daytona, AM2, and Takenobu is involved with the music, so think of it as sort of a precursor to Daytona, but the music won’t say so. Comparing Virtua Racing’s soundtrack to Daytona’s, VR has a more rock-ish feel to it than Daytona’s Pop-ey, Jazz-ish aesthetic. While it *may* not live up to the beast of a soundtrack that is Daytona, Virtua Racing *does* have some catchy tunes up its sleeve.

“Passing Breeze ~Arrange”

Takenobu was so good at making music for SEGA games, that he was promoted into the S.S.T. Band. S.S.T. stood for “SEGA Sound Team,” and as you could imagine, it was a band consisting of composers from SEGA games. Here is a cover by them of “Passing Breeze” from OutRun, composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi. In this arrangement, Takenobu is playing keyboard, in which he is also playing the melody of the song. Very relaxing cover, I prefer this one over the original arcade rendition!

a picture of takenobu with the S.S.T. band, circa 1991

“Burning Rangers”

When you’re talkin’ Takenobu, you CAN’T forget about his kickass vocals! This song from Burning Rangers called, um, Burning Rangers, is a great example of Takenobu’s vocal beauty. While this track wasn’t composed by him, and the original game is more obscure due to the game being released on the Saturn, and pretty much SEGA just shooting themselves in the foot during this time, thus you may not recognize this one. Despite the obscurity, this is a great recommendation! PLUS: shoutout to Dino Gavoni, who did the AMAZING sax solo around the 3 minute mark! (That alone is worth a listen, too!)

“Shenmue - Main Theme”

You may notice a pattern here, all of the songs before this one are all upbeat and high-energy. The main theme to shenmue takes a completely different turn to Takenobu’s style of composition, in that there are no vocals, no high tempo or energy, and only the energy of the orchestra. And this alone displays Takenobu’s flexibility of music, the last music he helped make before this was from Daytona USA 2, with music such as this ( youtube.com/watch?v=kbgD7VTM-MY ), and coming off from that to a huge, and I mean HUGE game like shenmue, also with a huge production team of composers behind it (10 composers!!) was daunting and impressive to say the least. Basically, the song and the soundtrack in general are amazing. So is the game. Have I mentioned how great shenmue is? It’s great. Play it. Now.

sources (in order of appearance)

Please look through some of these yourself, these interviews/articles are all way more informative than this blog!

seganerds.com/2014/05/23/takenobu-mitsuyoshi/

segaretro.org/Takenobu_Mitsuyoshi

shmuplations.com/sst/

www.ne.jp/asahi/v/hara/ga_core/ga_core1_1.html

tssznews.com/2013/03/28/interview-takenobu-mitsuyoshi/

segaretro.org/From_Loud_2_Low:_Takenobu_Mitsuyoshi_Works

segaretro.org/Burning_Rangers#Japanese_version

www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=42297

#sega #sega saturn #sega am2 #daytona usa #takenobu mitsuyoshi #game music #shenmue #retrogaming

7 notes · View notes

circlesandsoundwaves · 7 years

Text

“I finally feel really happy about what we're doing and what we're making.”: Interview with Brian Joyce of Commūnion

Photo and interview by Molly Louise Hudelson.

I first met Brian Joyce when I interviewed Major League in July 2012, a few months before they released Hard Feelings. We ended up doing three more interviews: in May 2013 while they were on tour with Senses Fail, October 2014, right before they released There's Nothing Wrong With Me, and in February 2015, when he was the first person I featured on Inner & Outer Portraits.

In 2014, after former lead vocalist Nick Trask left Major League, Brian took over lead vocals. While this was "terrifying" at first, being able to portray the songs he wrote in the way he wanted lead to a "newfound happiness and confidence.” With There's Nothing Wrong With Me, he opened up, putting more of himself into the songs.

Major League announced last February that they were breaking up, but Brian had already begun writing songs for what would become Commūnion. While he knew he didn't want to do "Major League 2.0"- Brian describes the sound Commūnion is aiming for as "The Weeknd meets the Cure playing Breakfast Club soundtrack"- he didn't know from the start that he could be a "true frontman."

Commūnion recently played their first round of shows, supporting Bad Rabbits in Providence, R.I., New York City, and Philadelphia. I met up with Brian for this interview before doors opened in Philadelphia (check out photos from the show here). Take a listen to the band’s first two songs, "Blow" and "Runway Love", on Spotify here, and read on for the full interview!

CIRCLES & SOUNDWAVES: For the record could you state your name, what you play in Commūnion, and a random fact about yourself?

Brian Joyce: Yes. My name is Brian, I sing in the band Commūnion and a random fact is that my toe on my left foot is double-jointed, and it literally pops all the time.

C&S: You sing in Commūnion- in Major League, you were originally playing guitar and writing songs and then you started singing lead as well- talk to me about this transition from playing guitar, to playing guitar and singing, to just singing in this band.

BJ: Yeah- it's definitely super weird. There's a lot more stress, for sure. But I think I'm happier.

C&S: Really?

BJ: When I was just playing guitar with Major League, I was writing all the songs but there wasn't as much stress with the anxiety of- "okay, it's literally on me"- I was just part of the background music.

C&S: You were part of the band.

BJ: Yeah, exactly. There was a lot less stress there, but I also had the stress of, "Do I feel like my band's being represented the right way?" It would've been like this in any band, not just Major League- but you just always wonder…

C&S: "Is this person communicating what I'm trying to communicate?"

BJ: Whoever's up there [singing] is the face of the band- are they portraying, properly, what you're trying to get across? Being the songwriter and then giving it to somebody [to sing], it's basically like being a scriptwriter- you're giving it to somebody and going, "Hey, act this out" and hoping that it's being portrayed correctly.

And then being able to do that with Major League once I took over vocals, I started feeling this newfound happiness and confidence because I could portray it the way I want and it's… you know, it was totally subjective.

C&S: Did it feel vulnerable?

BJ: Very, absolutely. But I was happy to be able to portray the music the way I wanted it to be portrayed at that point. But then doing this, where it's no guitar- that's the hardest part because the guitar was always my safety blanket.

C&S: I remember that first show where you sang lead- it was a college show in Connecticut- you were freaking out- and then here you are.

BJ: My shirt was soaked that show. I was sweating bullets, yeah. When I had first taken over vocals for Major League my dad was like, "Well, I mean, you gonna drop the guitar?" and I was like, "I'm not Freddie Mercury, I just can't do that kind of stuff- that's just not me." That wasn't me at the time. I think it took me a little while to get to that point.

C&S: A little while of doing lead vocals and playing guitar for Major League to get to this point?

BJ: Yeah, exactly. After Major League broke up I was still under the same management [Matty Arsenault at Reclaim Music Group] because I was still doing music. I was talking to them, and I just mentioned, "You know, we lost David Bowie last year, we lost Prince, we lost George Michael…. It's just so crazy- I wish there was another artist like that. I wish there was somebody that would come out and do what Gerard Way did in the mid-2000s and inspired me to be like, 'Oh my god I would love to have that in a band.'"

C&S: Did you know immediately that you wanted to do that?

BJ: No. Matty said, "Why are you waiting for somebody else to come along and do it? Why don't you just do it?" and I was like, "I don't know." We talked about it, and it was a really healthy conversation. After that it was kind of like, "You know what? Someone's gotta do it."

The whole reason why I started touring in the first place was because… I think the pessimistic side was, "Well, how many bands actually make it? How many bands actually get to play Warped Tour? How many bands actually get to do this and that and tour the world?" But then I started thinking, "Well, why not me? Why couldn't it be my band- why couldn't it happen like this?" It's gotta happen to somebody, so I think if you try hard enough…

And so [with this] it was the same thought process. I thought about what Matty said and I was like, "You know what? Why not me? Why can't I just be the next generation of it? Why can't I at least try to be a part of that?" Dua from Bad Rabbits is such an incredible frontman- from his interaction with the crowd, to- his vocals are insane. There's so many people who are true frontmen- and just thinking about that, I thought, "Well, why can't I be included in that? Why can't I take the reigns and try and swing in to that?"

C&S: Talk to me about stepping out on stage for the first time as just a frontman on Friday night in Providence.

BJ: Yeah. Terrifying. [Laughs.]

C&S: Was this more terrifying than when you first sang for Major League?

BJ: No. Major League was so much more terrifying and I think it was because I had shoes to fill and I knew that there were expectations [from] other people. Whereas this is my own thing, I get to do it however I want. If I wanna just stand there with a mic stand and not really do anything but hang on or whatever, then that's totally on me, I just gotta make it work and I have to make it my own. Last night [in New York] I was much more comfortable but it wasn't anything compared to what I went through with Major League as far as nerves and expectations.

I actually think the music video for "Blow" was more nerve-wracking than last night.

C&S: How so?

BJ: It was my very first time, just me with a mic. It was also a little strange because- Bad Rabbits has been pulling amazing crowds on this run and being in a room full of people, you feel a little more confident; everybody's there for the same reason. Whereas when we did the video, all the extras were just standing around drinking, watching, and I was like- "oh god"- and I'm just singing to a track so it's even weirder. But getting that out of my system- we practiced all last week and being able to practice and get in my own zone and get in my groove, that helped a lot. Getting up there on Friday, it was only scary in the fact that everything built to this and it was like, "Alright, here we go."

C&S: How did you get from "Why can't I be this frontman, rockstar guy?" to this weekend, these shows with Bad Rabbits- how did this band come together?

BJ: After Major League had broken up, I had a bunch of songs written, I had a bunch of ideas. Major League was supposed to go into the studio for another LP but we called it quits. We still had studio time booked so I went in with the producer- Chris Curran out of Reclaim Music Studios- and I was like "Hey, listen- no band." [Laughs.]- he's like "okay, so what are we doing?"

Everything was in my head and I told everything to Chris, and he was like, "I think I know what you're looking for." He and I sat down for an entire weekend and we had Kevin Burke- he's a piano player, freelance musician- come do some piano and stuff. It was the three of us and then Matt Chila from Major League [joined as] our guitarist- the four of us sat down and took all the ideas and helped them flourish into actual full songs. It was a lot of fun and it was great; we had a blast doing it and we were really happy with the way things came out. After that, we took some time to sit on the songs, let them marinate a little bit, go back, change things, whatever.

C&S: Major League broke up last February, so this was...

BJ: This was last January. We knew we were breaking up before we announced it, so this was last January that I went in and recorded everything and I did all of this before Major League's last two tours.

C&S: The one with Forever Came Calling, and then you went back to Japan.

BJ: Yes. So all of this was done before any of that, and I was like, "Listen, we still have things to finish with Major League, so once that's done, we'll revisit this." I did the last couple tours with Major League and then I wound up picking up a side gig with Capsize- which was great, I love those guys, they're wonderful and we had a blast- but it wound up lasting a lot longer than anticipated, just because that band tours nonstop- which of course I love, I mean, I did it for seven years.

In December I had just gotten out of the studio re-recording the finished version of "Blow" and Capsize was like "Hey, we got this Norma Jean tour coming up in March" and that's when the Commūnion camp was like, "Okay, what are you doing? Are you joining Capsize or are you doing Commūnion?" I talked to the Capsize guys and let them know- and everything's great, we're still great friends, we talk all the time. Once that was finished Matty was like, "As soon as we release 'Blow', that's it. Once this single's out, we have to keep going."

We released "Blow" on Valentine's Day and as soon as it came out we had a great response- we were absolutely thrilled about the response. When we did the video for "Blow", there was no drummer. It was literally just Matt and myself, and Chris was our producer. When we did the video we called Christian Mullen, who played in A Loss For Words, Handguns, [and] I Call Fives, [and] he played in ska bands when we were in high school. He's been on Warped Tour since he was 13 years old, so the kid's a monster on drums, and he lives right down the street from us. We called Christian and we were like, "Hey man, I know this is super last minute, but we're doing a video today, is there any way you can come record drums for the video?"… the kid literally learned the song on his drive to the video shoot and sat down and played. We were like, "Man, this is crazy." So, [we] talked to Christian, he was like, "I'd love to."

After "Blow" released, Mike Adams- who played bass and was the primary songwriter for A Loss For Words- called me and was like, "Listen, I don't know what you're looking for, I don't even know if I fit, like, the image that you want, but anything I can do to help, I would love to be a part of Commūnion" and I've been- I mean, we all grew up being fans of A Loss For Words.

C&S: When Major League played the final A Loss For Words show, you told a story on stage about touring up to New England for the first time, when your show got cancelled and you walked up to Matty...

BJ: Those guys took us under their wing. Our show got cancelled- we were up in New Hampshire, and had no business being there at that point because the show got cancelled.

C&S: What year was this?

BJ: 2010, I think. I went online and found that there was a show down the street. Our original plan was just to hang out at the show; we didn't even know that A Loss For Words was playing. We got there and I was like, "Holy shit, A Loss For Words is playing, and they're a pop-punk band and that's the same as Major League, so let's try and see if we can get on this show." I went up and asked Matty, "Hey, man, is there any way that we can jump on the show- we can open it, even just play like three songs or something?" and he was like, "Dude, play right before us- use all of our equipment, who cares?" After that, those guys took us under their wing- they took us on multiple tours. Chila and I wound up filling in for them on their final tour.

On Warped Tour in 2015, Matty was out with PVRIS, who he manages, and asked, "Is there anything you guys need? Like you need any help with anything?" [Major League] had just parted ways with our previous management and we were like, "Yeah, actually- that'd be great" and he took us on. He's been amazing ever since. I've never met anyone that sleeps less and hustles more than Matty.

So yeah- everything kinda came full circle. Mikey joined and then that's when Chris Curran- who was the producer- turned around and was like, "Well, screw it- I'm recording all the songs anyway, and I know everything- why don't I just play guitar and keyboard?" I was like, "Please, by all means"- there couldn't have been a more natural transition for everybody. Mikey and Chris live together in the same house and the studio's in the basement, so it was perfect- it just made sense for everybody to do that.

C&S: Let's go back five years ago or so, to when you were working on Hard Feelings- you were writing songs for someone else to sing versus starting to write songs that you were going to sing yourself. Did that affect your writing process at all?

BJ: Yes, absolutely. Because- "Seasons" dabbled in it for sure, but "Homewrecker" was the first song that- there was no filler words, there was nothing that I just threw in there for the sake of the song, everything I said in that song was absolutely my life growing up, my childhood and the things that had happened. I thought it was portrayed amazing, I thought he did an amazing job with it.

Then once we did There's Nothing Wrong With Me, so much of me felt I needed to put more of myself into this now. When we would play "Homewrecker" live, [even] not being the singer I would still get this overwhelming feeling that I'd never experienced with anything in our catalog before. I just knew that I wanted to feel that way every time I play a song. So yes- there was so much more that went in to that.

C&S: When you were writing these songs first, had Major League already decided to break up, or was there ever a question of, "Well, maybe these will be Major League songs"?

BJ: There were certain things from songs- not necessarily the songs themselves- that I had written for Major League, whether it was guitar parts or drums or whatever, that we had thought about using. But once Major League broke up, it was just like, "Alright, then I'm gonna take everything that I had before, completely strip it down, rework it."

C&S: It's a very different style, musically, from Major League.

BJ: Absolutely. I mean, "Blow" is probably the closest thing to what Major League was- everything else is very keyboard-driven and Christian has a whole sample pad that he plays on drums, rather than his regular drumkit.

C&S: Did you know you wanted to go for such a different style?

BJ: Yes. I've always loved The Cure and all those kinds of bands…. When I went to Chris he was like, "Alright, what are you looking to go for with this new thing?". I didn't want to start another band and have it be Major League 2.0. What's the point? You might as well…

C&S: Make another Major League record.

BJ: Exactly. When I went to Chris, the synopsis of it was, "I want to sound like The Weeknd meets the Cure playing Breakfast Club soundtrack" and he was just like, "That's my shit- let's do it."

Chris is in the pop world. He's written for PVRIS, he's written for so many different bands [that are] all very pop-driven. We've gotten compared to The 1975, Japanese House- that kinda style- but I think for us the idea behind it is more like The Cure, or even The Smiths a little bit- this 80s emo-pop kinda stuff. We wanted it to be a darker vibe [and] dabble in that world a little bit.

C&S: Where did the band name "Commūnion" come from?

BJ: Okay so- I have religious tattoos, [and] I literally wear a crucifix that a friend got it for me that has a knife in it- but I'm not a religious person. My mom is; my mom is very religious.

C&S: And that's what "Just As I Am" was about.

BJ: Yes, "Just As I Am" was the first step to me touching this kind of stuff- I wanted it to sound like dark pop, you know? But the guitars that we used, and we recorded with Will Yip and there was no extra synths in there or anything like that.... Will is very, "If it doesn't come out of a guitar, naturally, then it's not happening." So "Just As I Am", you could almost say it's a Commūnion song with no pop.

There's just something so dark and eerie about religious imagery to me. We were talking about what we wanted to call the band and a couple different names that came up- Nylon was one of them, there was a couple different things that we just thought were cool- and Commūnion just stuck. I had mentioned it to Matty and the definition is "two or more people coming together for a common purpose."

C&S: There you go.

BJ: The way it started was me and Chris, coming together to try and start this thing. And then we filled it in with Chila, Mikey, and Christian- so that really stuck out, like, "Oh man, this fits what Chris and I are trying to do here." We were sitting around their table up in Thompson, Connecticut, hanging out, and I said, "What do you guys think about the name Commūnion?". Matty hit the table and he's like, "That's it." And Chris was like "I love it- I love the idea behind it." The logo, the two hands, that's "Commūnion" in sign language.

I really enjoy the religious undertones and there's always, to me, been something that… I like the things I fear. I fear the intensity of a religion and what it does to people and what it stands for and what people interpret it standing for.

C&S: You've released two songs, this is your last of three shows with Bad Rabbits- what's next for Commūnion? What can people expect?

BJ: We have a new single coming out called "Incarnation", which is an absolute, 100% religious song- the video's in a church.

C&S: Is it weird to be singing about religion? You said you like what you fear…

BJ: Right, yeah- "Incarnation" is the only song that has any religious tones in it or anything, and it won't stay that way- it's not like we're trying to portray as a Christian band or anything like that, it's literally just a name. It's just "Commūnion"- and "Commūnion" is not even really a religious term, it's just adopted by religion.

So- yeah- we are releasing "Incarnation" and in a few months we're releasing our fourth single "Americana Summer" which is a very poppy, summertime song- it's gonna be the second song in the set tonight- and then we have a few things coming up this summer. Next Saturday we're playing the Wilmington Flower Market festival with LeAnn Rimes- which is super weird and cool- it's definitely gonna be cool.

C&S: That's a very different audience from probably anything you've done.

BJ: Right, exactly- but they asked us to be a part of it and we said, "You know what? Why not? Let's see what we can do." It's about pushing ourselves a little bit.

The production that's gone in to this so far- we just spent four thousand dollars this week on everything that we need to really sound like the record…. I've been in a punk band, I've been in a band that has production on a record and you get live and you just kinda jam out and hope it sounds as good as you can. Whereas with this, we want it to sound as close as possible to the record. Chila had never played keyboard before and it was kinda like, "Well, you're playing a keyboard now, kid- that's what we gotta do." So we got keyboards, we got the sample pads- it's not just a backing track of drum hits, Christian is actually playing the drums, just on the pad.

We wanna try and push our boundaries and see how far we can go and where we can take things. The way we see it is just practice for the future. We wanna keep shooting higher and higher and this was something we never thought we would get. Right off the bat, for your first shows ever to be supporting Bad Rabbits as direct support- we were kinda blown away. They heard "Blow" and sent us a message, like "Hey, you guys should come do this stuff with us." We were like- "We have one song." [Laughs.] "We should start recording other stuff."

C&S: I asked this the first time I interviewed Major League and this is something I ask every band I interview- how do you respond to or deal with any kind of negativity or "haters" surrounding your band?

BJ: I think it comes with dealing with it for so long… I'm sure my answer was much different when I talked about it with Major League because I was a very bitter person with that. I was young and I didn't take things too well and I got criticism sometimes for the way I handled things. I think the reason why I took it so hard with Major League was because- one, I was giving this stuff to somebody else to portray and then when we were getting negative feedback, it- my fault- brought down the morale of the band- "there's a reason why this is happening, we have to be better." Clearly there's stuff that people don't like, whatever- and you're not gonna please everybody and that's one hundred percent for sure.

And then again with Major League once I took over [lead vocals], I handled that criticism pretty hard because to me it was like, "Listen, I'm trying to do the best I can- somebody just left, out of the blue, and now I have to fill these shoes and I'm doing what I can." But to expect another human being to do and sound exactly the same as somebody else is just bullshit.

But through that, once I got over that, now with Commūnion, I finally feel really happy about what we're doing and what we're making. So in that, I think more understanding comes with it. You know- personally I haven't seen much negativity.

C&S: Yeah, I mean all I've seen so far has been people super excited about these songs.

BJ: It all seems really cool, and we're very happy about that. I think there was one comment on YouTube that was like, "Major League was better"- "Okay, well I did that too, so thanks." [Laughs.]

I think also, [with] everybody being older now- I just turned 28 and Matt's 27, Chris and Mikey are in their 30s and Christian's the youngest, he's 26- we just kinda... don't... care. We're making music that makes us so happy and we're all doing our thing. We're not, like, angsty 19-year-olds trying to prove our parents wrong. We all have our own lives going on, but we also feel very passionate and confident in what we're doing now. I think that's a big part of it- when you have the confidence in the rest of your band and your team, from Matty all the way down- you're just desensitized to the criticism because no amount of words are going to beat how fucking cool this is.

C&S: I can see in your face and your demeanor- you seem excited, you seem happy, feeling all the good things, which is awesome.

Well, thank you so much.

BJ: Yeah, of course, absolutely.

C&S: Is there anything else you wanna say, anything else people reading this should know?

BJ: Just keep an eye out. We have a lot of cool stuff that we're really excited to release- that's about it. Thanks Brian! Be sure to keep up with Commūnion on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their official website.

#interview #molly #communion #Commūnion #brian joyce #major league #a loss for words #matty arsenault #reclaim music group #reclaim studios #music #music blog #band interview #band interviews #bad rabbits

1 note · View note

grimelords · 6 years

Photo

My March playlist is finished and posted on time for once! Please enjoy three and a half hours of my new and old favourite music. A lot of post-hardcore, country of a few different flavours and a thirteen second long song that goes beep beep boop. Enjoy.

Old Money - Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: Who among you will join me on my podcast ‘Omar Podriguez-Locast’ where we discuss one of Omar Rodriguez’s 60+ insane solo albums every week and grow gradually infuriated with the very existence of each other until listeners are just tuning in each week for the episode where one of us finally snaps and attacks the other with a microphone?

America’s Most Blunted - Madvillain: It’s weird that this song about the wild and wacky world of jazz cigarettes opens up with a Steve Reich sample before moving into some real Reefer Madness type lameness at the end. Songs from so long before any type of legalisation are so lame like 'recent research shows that it’s not so darn harmful!’. This song is still very good though. I only found out that Lord Quas was just Madlib recently but I really respect the idea of having a rap alter-ego that’s just you with a pitch pedal.

Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs: An underrated part of Call Me By Your Name is when Armie Hammer hears this song playing from a car and sprints over to dance with a woman who looks like she’s doing the monster mash.

Seven Stop Hold Restart - Bear Vs. Shark: Despite their bad name Bear Vs. Shark are a very good band and the best lyric in this song is when he says 'I am nine years old with short legs and arms.’ What I like about this song, and this band, is that the screaming is not the sort of affected scream-singing of a lot of their contemporaries it’s just a stocky guy absolutely yelling his guts out, which I appreciate.

Turncoat Revolution - Hot Cross: I think that’s close to what I like so much about Hot Cross too, I’ve never listened to Saetia either (the other band this guy sings for) but maybe I should because I just love this guy’s voice. The central hammery riff is so appealing to me but my favourite part of this song is the ending where the three chords just shrink away as the whole thing mellows down, it feels like realising you’ve been mad at something that happened in a dream this whole time.

Mag11 P82 - Venetian Snares and Daniel Lanois: Venetian Snares is apparently doing an album with Daniel Lanois who produced a bunch of U2 albums so my dream of a Bono/Venetian Snares team up is one step closer to reality. I like collaborations like this where you can very clearly tell who did what part. It’s hard to mistake when and how Venetian Snares is involved in a song a lot of the time. I really like this team up because freeing Snares from any kind of melodic responsibility allows Lanois to give the song a huge amount of space, unprecedented in a Snares song where the melody is often just as frantic as the rest of it.

Cornflake Girl - Tori Amos: Do you remember when Tori Amos had that album called American Doll Posse where she was doing a bunch of characters or something and it’s got one of the worst covers of all time in my opinion and I think about it a lot. Had a song called Big Wheel on it that I get stuck in my head a lot. But this isn’t that song so never mind! I was thinking about the production on this song, and how crazy it is to have whistling as a big part of your song while avoiding having everyone think of it as 'that whistling song’. All the instrumentation on this is great, the mandolin and acoustic next to each other making a huge bed for the piano to move under, then the harpsichord sounding keyboard and the guest vocal near the end, there’s just so much happening I love it.

The Field That Touches My House And Yours - Sarah Louise: This is probably the upcoming album I’m most excited about right now. Sarah Louise (who’s one half of House And Land who I’ve posted about before) is pulling a real James Blake by releasing a lot of amazing instrumental music and then suddenly revealing she’s an absolutely incredible singer and songwriter as well.

Jezebel - The Drones: The Drones have a lot of good songs about how it’s the end of the world and we’re all fucked and we’re all gonna die but this is one of my favourites. The sort of wide ranging scientific nihilism of an opening line like 'strontium 90, removed from milk’ really sets the tone for the rest of this song as it lays out every war like an ongoing nightmare that you have no option but to participate in as your body and the earth turn to muck in their wake.

How Sweet It Is - Karen Dalton: Everyone always talks about Karen Dalton as this mercurial folk phenomenon but I really love her second album where she just does standards with a full band. Hearing her bring her insane, complete chaos sense of rhythm to these regular-ass songs is such a delight to me. The way she just swoops in on the first line with absolutely no regard for whatever else is going on really cracks me up. That the song has backing vocalists for the chorus just makes it better, I imagine them singing while glancing at each other with panicked eyes as she just wildly darts around the microphone and sings absolutely whenever.

Bang Bang - Vanilla Fudge: Pitchfork had some video about the origins of heavy metal and I lasted about ten seconds becuase they mentioned a 60s psychedelic metal forerunner named Vanilla Fudge and my brain went 'funy’ so I looked them up instead. This song is a nightmare I absolutely love it, there’s simply not enough organs around anymore. The organ sounds absolutely immense and balanced against their cursed harmonies it sounds even bigger, what a jam.

Ride For Me (feat. Young Thug & 24 Hrs) - A-Trak and Falcons: Young Thug has finally brought back his insane Harambe voice and I for one couldn’t be happier. I have no idea who 24hrs is but he for real sounds like when Justin Beiber first came out so that’s a thrill.

Space Song - Beach House: This might be the platonic ideal of a Beach House song, it’s just beautiful and I don’t think I really have anything more to say about it. Beach House put out two albums in 2015, they put out the on that this song is on and then like three weeks later they surprise released another one and I was so shocked by the deluge of content that I have never listened to the second one. A powerful lesson for Beach House.

Anna - Will Butler: This song is so good I have no recollection of what the rest of the album sounds like, I just listen to this song over and over and over. Every part is good. The brass, the 'ba ba ba’s, they way he says 'you Got to get Mo-nay’, the piano breaks that sound like he’s just slamming it with flat hands. What a gift.

Hawkmoon 269 - U2: Here’s the straight up truth that nobody wants to hear: Rattle And Hum is U2’s best album. It’s literally just The Joshua Tree except better. It’s every bad instinct of U2 turned up to 11, which is what makes it good. He mentions preachers like twenty times on this album and there’s a gospel choir on two songs, it’s all happening all the time.

Silver And Gold - U2: Here also, is the straight truth: this is U2’s best song. A proper straight up political song about a specific idea, incredible instrumentation and Bono realising halfway through his speech that the crowd unfortunately does not care about Desmond Tutu’s request for economic sanctions against South Africa.

Hunting For Witches - Bloc Party: Post 9/11 war on terror indie is such a good genre. Kele’s always been a bit of a lame-o and he’s really on display here but when the instrumentation bangs like this it’s forgivable. Bloc Party have always seemed like a band where absolutely everyone is pulling their weight and doing the most in every single song and this is a good example. The drums! Matt Tong deserves a trophy!

All Of The Lights - Kanye West: I literally remember where I was the first time I heard the drums in this song, that’s how good it was. I can’t believe I only just found out that every single famous person features on this song. I thought it was just Rhianna but it turns out it’s La Roux in the 'fast cars shooting stars’ bit, Cudi in the 'getting mine’ bit, and fucking Fergie in the 'unemployment line’ part PLUS Elton John and Alicia Keys in the outro? This song is ridiculous. It’s almost a shame that such an incredible song in every aspect features some of Kanye’s most boneheaded verses but I suppose that’s what I love about him.

Let’s Hear It For The Boy - Deniece Williams: I’d like to invite you all now to stand and give a round of applause for my dipshit miser boyfriend that dresses like shit and can’t sing, I love him. I love this song a lot because I feel like she’s talking about me. This is a great song that’s right at the top of my long list of potential wrestling entrance themes.

Hey! - The Go! Team: I was premature when I said that new Go Team album wasn’t that great because it is in actuality very very good. This song would make a good wrestling theme too now that I think of it.

Monument - Royksopp & Robyn: I put the T.I.E. version of this song on my list last month and that prompted me to give the original another listen because it’s honestly just as good in a totally opposite direction. A long bit of space-jazz instead of a monolith threatening to crush you.

Merrymaking At My Place - Calvin Harris: My friend sent me this song and said it reminded him of Mother! which is very funny in my opinion. Loads of people come to my house, they take stuff inside of my house, and smoke stuff outside of my house, lots of people at my front door, lots of people in my front door, trying to get into my house. At my place [leaning into the mic] Baby. [panicked] Baby at my place.

Precious Lord (Take My Hand) (Parts 1 & 2) - Aretha Franklin: I was searching spotify for a good version of The Day Is Past And Gone and ended up finding this Aretha Franklin album that is absolutely incredible. It turns out it’s her first ever recording from when she was 14, which is mind boggling. It sounds like it was recorded from the back row of the church so it has this incredible amount of space to it and she just completely fills it with immense power. Even her piano playing is amazing. The whole thing is just an astonishing piece of music.

Big Iron - Marty Robbins: I was camping this month and thinking about country music, and so this and the next few songs are the result of that. I think Taylor Swift should not only pivot back to county for her next album but pivot back to this kind of cowboy story-song country. She should, in fact, just cover this song. This is The cowboy album and I feel like Marty Robbins may have been the most American man that ever lived, he used the money he made from cowboy songs to finance a NASCAR career.

Country Dumb - Josh T. Pearson: I spent a long time on the fence about Josh T. Pearson because music like this always raises the question of authenticity. He sort of feels like the country version of Nick Cave to me, straining for a very very authentic thing but in actuality a Berlin art boy. The main difference between Pearson and Cave though is that Pearson is actually very good. So I reconcile it by telling myself he’s a sort of Lana Del Rey character singer or something like that. This song is so great and I especially like his guitar style of letting the words lead and the guitar follow, where the lyrics are at the forefront and every part of the music is purely in support of them.

Angel From Montgomery - John Prine: I’m so glad that John Prine is enjoying a bit of a late life resurgence in popularity among the Youth right now because he really deserves it. He feels like the songwriter that every songwriter loves but nobody else has ever heard of. I love this song, it feels like it was custom built to be some 70 year old country woman’s 'Hurt’.

Bogota Affair - Kid Creole And The Coconuts: A good and tropical song about getting cucked on an island and absolutely loving it.

Mientras La Veo Sonar - Rx Bandits: I figured out the reason I like this song and it’s honestly just that it sounds like watered down Mars Volta and I’ll take all of that you’ve got.

Joan, I’m Disappearing - City Calm Down: The way the first line of this song is an unexpected anacrusis makes me laugh cause it feels like the guy from The National just suddenly stepping into your room and collapsing into a seat to complain. I absolutely love this song, I’ve been listening to it on repeat. It’s melodically brilliant in the chorus, it just keeps giving, and structurally it never gets boring by just getting bigger and expanding the entire time to this huge emotional outpouring. I love the lyrics to this song because they’re so pathetic, which sounds like a strange and cruel thing to say but it’s true. It’s such a specific misguided melodramatic plea for a childish love that went on for too long and it’s just so heartbreaking and pathetic, and when it’s turned up to the emotional peak it’s believable and you sympathise. I wish this song went for five minutes more.

Footsteps - Dardanelles: This album was the critical darling of Australian music in 2006 and then this band just totally disappeared and I couldn’t find it for a long time before someone added it to spotify last year and now all their songs have <1000 plays. Very mysterious. I go through stages of being totally obsessed with this song, every part of it is just my favourite kind of pretentious art rock shit. 'This trail of breadcrumbs below your feet whispers like muscle cars on heat’? That’s good lyrics!

Queen Majesty - Techniques: I heard this song late at night when I was listening to ABC RN to fall asleep and some old guy was explaining how rocksteady was better than reggae and now I agree with him.

Opal (Four Tet Remix) - Bicep: The way this song builds around the central strong chords is just incredible, it’s a really simple motif and the way it comes back and sits foundationally through the whole piece. I love in the later half how the extra off-time melodies that seem to have no relation at all to the just come swooping through and almost destabilise the whole thing before those strong strong chords come through again. Also I have a strong suspicion that the snare sound in this is just Four Tet slapping his desk which I respect.

Jesus Came To My Birthday Party - The Middle East: I can’t overstate how much this song is directly wired to my brain stem. It is just perfect. This song is so simple but it feels like it came from another dimension to impart wisdom to me. It honestly makes me feel crazy. This whole album feels like the long lost brother of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea thematically and it really deserves a similar spot in the canon in my opinion. Please listen to it.

Eden - Talk Talk: The dynamics in the guitar playing is what really gets me in this song. The huge crescendo where it feels like the sound is being pulled apart from the inside dissipating to steam as soon as the groove kicks in. I don’t know, there’s not much to be said about Spirit Of Eden that hasn’t already been said, it’s transcendental music. It’s cliched but this is great driving music, music to space out and think about the universe to.

Outlaw Blues - Queens Of The Stone Age: What a treat to suddenly discover that one of my favourite bands has covered my favourite Bob Dylan song and done a great job of it too!

No Condition Is Permanent - Marijata: Ok this is embarrassing but the way I found out about this song was some goober on the overwatch subreddit had made playlists for every hero (Torbjorn’s was all electo-swing and pirate metal so who knows what the fuck was going on) and this and the next song were both on the Doomfist playlist, which was a lot of 70s afro-funk and highlife music which personally isn’t really telling the full story of Doomfist but that’s a whole other post. Anyway this song is great, and I’m glad I listened to this whole dumb-ass playlist to find it. I have a real affinity for songs like that that feel like the recording only ended cause they ran out of tape or the singer collapsed from exhaustion. This song could go for another 20 minutes and I’d only love it more.

Love And Death - Ebo Taylor: The groove of the drums in this song and the melodies of the horns are just hypnotising, and combined with the lyrics this feels like some very dark magic that I completely love. The guitar is really amazing in this as well actually, especially the solo where he switches back and forth between jazz soloing and just frantically strumming open chords.

Automatic (12" Version) - The Pointer Sisters: Huge fan of the extremely powerful megaman synth that comes in about halfway through this song and just charges the whole place up. I love how rich and deep her voice is, how it’s built on by the harmonies in the prechorus and then unleashed in the chorus. I also love how simple the chorus is, it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the song and the verses are just as good which is exactly what you want from a long mix like this. Huge fan of the deep guy’s voice just saying 'au-to-ma-tic’ during the fade out too, give that guy some more to do.

White Girl - Soul Coughing: Lyrically most Soul Coughing songs sound like somewhere between echolalia and reading out every street sign that you see, which is very appealing to me because that’s essentially how I communicate, but this one feels like a dire warning about an approaching conqueror. Also the ending of this song make me laugh because it’s the same as at the end of New Noise by Refused where he just screams 'THE NEW BEAT’ over and over and over after the instruments have all finished and in my eyes that’s a very very funny thing to do with the phrase 'white girl’.

Tone Tone Tone & Tone Tone Two - Shuta Hasunuma and U-zhaan: This album feels like some real Tiny Mix Tapes-core; a collaboration between two Japanese composers - a found object orchestra composer and a tabla player but against all odds it’s actually good. Unfortunately my favourite part of it is this 13 second piece of music that sounds like the brand ID for a very high-end podcast network.

I Won’t Be Found - The Tallest Man On Earth: I listened to this song eight times in a row and sang along the whole time on my drive home from work the other day. His voice is so uniquely good, a cowboy yodel with a slight swedish accent. I’m hooked right from when he sings 'morning’ as 'morning-AH’.

Now U Got Me Hooked - A.A.L: I can’t get over how good this new Nicolas Jaar side project album is. It’s just wall to wall bangers, a perfect party album. I love the really raw sound of a lot of the drums in this song; the huge clap that’s on the edge of being over-distorted mixed with a huge rumbling kick blowing out the low frequency that eventually cleans up and brings the sample back in and almost eliminates the bass entirely before it drops again and the sequence starts over. I love how long a lot of the songs on this album are, every idea is given so much room to completely stretch out.

Ride - Lana Del Rey: I saw Lana live last night and as soon as the first notes of this song played the girl in front of me absolutely screamed 'BITCH!!’ and I felt a real kinship with her. I really think this might be my favourite song of hers. It makes me so emotional every time and I can’t even pinpoint why. The way she sings 'fucking crazy’ the huge, sweeping chorus. It’s just amazing, I love her so much! Bitch!!

listen here

#playlists

95 notes · View notes