Any string musician’s eyes would perk up at the sight of seeing Yo Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer being on the title of this post. For Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile, the bluegrass fans got all giddy, I bet. These four fantastic musicians teamed up to make one heck of a collaboration album called “The Goat Rodeo Sessions” which featured all of the musicians in their prime element, crafting some of the best “fiddle-esque” music I’ve ever heard. One standout on the album, which you should get, is the first song “Attaboy” which sounds like multiple traditional fiddle style tunes smashed together with all of the supreme musical ability of the four musicians. Feels good, man.
INSANITY! Bet the regular viewers, if there are any, are scratching their heads. There has never been any fiddle style type of music on here before! BUT ALAS, I am a huge fan. There just aren’t many really good tunes that have surfaced these days, unfortunately. There are some great bands and tunes out there though. Y’all should look ’em up. This one is a mind explosion.
The Black Keys do it again, musically and visually with their newest single “Lonely Boy” that is for their December 6th release El Camino. The track sounds like a traditional southern blues-rock classic already, with it’s T-Rex reminiscent guitars and Auerbach’s signature croon. This track literally rocks. Also, the video is awesome. Cannot deny it.
CHECK IT OUT!!!
If you preorder the album you can get a free download of the track! Awww yeahhh!!!
So this song has been out for a few months now but I’m finally doing it justice. This song is originally done by Marina and the Diamonds, but How to Dress Well, one of my favorite acts of last year (and this year), reworked it to make it his. This track is the epitome of pop songs created from the 90’s, then drenched in good vibes. Sounds otherworldly and in space.
Gah. This song is just really really good. I hope you enjoy it.
Grimes is the stage name of Claire Boucher, who has been burning the music blog front for about a year now with her very dark remixes and strange sounding pop songs. For the most part, I wasn’t really impressed or interested in the music she put out (sorry, Claire if you’re reading this. But you’ll enjoy the next part!)
That all changed with the release of her new song “Oblivion” which features a sweet bass synth line and feather light vocals. I really like it and it also helped me get introduced into a few of Grimes’ remixes of Young Galaxy and Washed Out which I really enjoy as well.
The other side of the Massive Attack x Burial collaboration features a chilling remix of one of Massive Attack’s singles from their album they released last year, Heligoland.
This track has the signature Burial feel on it where you feel like you’ve transported to a bus stop bench on a sort of popular street for soulless business men and unsuccessful, unhappy lobbyists. It’s most definitely raining in this scenario, like all other Burial songs, and you seem to be surrounded in an essence of internal strife as well as external. The internal conflict possibly deals with problems within the character, not though someone else. The internal strife is what drives each of his tracks to become the great, brooding pieces of work they are. Burial infuses the Massive Attack track with his signature style and makes it something totally different and beautiful.
Everything Burial has released thus far in his career has not disappointed me and he reigns supreme as one of my all time favorite electronic artists of all time. I EXTREMELY recommend looking up all of his stuff, along with Massive Attack’s stuff. Both are very talented groups and demand your immediate attention right now.
Here’s Massive Attack x Burial – “Paradise Circus”
ALSO, Check out the other collaboration track, “Four Walls”
Balam Acab just put up his remix of one of my favorite songs of the year, Lana Del Rey’s great song “Video Games.”
This is the Later with Jools Holland version, so you hear the small ornaments that Del Rey puts on her song. Along with Balam Acab’s great signature sound added to it, this song has a whole new face on it. A very well done remix.
That is a nice segue into my next topic, where I’ll be posting my favorite remixes of songs from this year. There won’t be very many and I probably missed a lot of really good ones since I just started midway through the year. Nevertheless, it would be nice to send me some sweet remixes that you all enjoyed.
Remember last year when I was hyped out about a band called Gobble Gobble and their great song “Lawn Knives”? Well Gobble Gobble has returned, only under the name of Born Gold. The music has definitely not changed in the slightest; it’s still the hyperactive blast for your ears like it was before.
The first two songs on this album are the two singles they released last year “Lawn Knives” and “End of Days” which were two of my all time favorite tracks from last year. So they definitely started the album off right with those two. They followed the two previous singles with one of their newer singles “Decimate Everything” which is another GREAT song. Another awesome song is “Alabaster Bodyworlds” which is similar Some songs don’t have the best of introductions, like “Eat Sun, Son” which starts off with a disassembled array of strange sounds and very sharp synth noises. Then it warps into an actual poppish song, totally apart from the introduction. The lyrics are also extremely strange. They always were. They still are. When you can tell what they’re saying, anyways. Talking about wombs, veins, blood, crazy alien things that don’t make sense… the list goes on. But it’s alright, cause this stuff is a blast.
This band definitely has a signature style which is characterized by intensely quick and hard-hitting beats and a ton of textures and melodies going on you almost get overstimulated from all of the dimensions of the music. Seriously, it’s like your ears and brain are on a sugar high created by this music; the equivalent of just doing a line of cane sugar. There is an unlimited amount of chopped up and distorted synths that it’s mind-altering, a bit. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, not at all. It’s just that not a lot of music you get the feeling of 100% excitement and energy all the time, every single listen. This music definitely isn’t for everybody. It’s like radio pop music put into a food processor and injected with ten different industrial chemicals to create something alive out of something once-dead. I like it. Something like I haven’t heard before.
The reason I bring this album up is because they are offering a free download of the album on their bandcamp page right HERE so you can get it RIGHT NOW! You can also stream it on Soundcloud to see if you like it before you download it FOR FREE. If you were to get just a few songs from it, I would suggest the first three songs and the last two, if you were to get ANY of them. I seriously recommend the whole album because it’s free AND it’s INSANE.
Early yesterday I saw that The Weeknd’s facebook page put out a post that said “Initiation”, which usually signals something is coming out unexpectedly later that day. True to their tradition, they released a new song called “Initiation” later that day on their facebook and twitter. It’s a RAGER.
As a standalone track, it seems a bit out of place. But if you combine it with their previous efforts, the House of Balloons and Thursday mixtapes, the track fits in perfectly with the material. It’s extremely dark, brooding and there are a ton of creepy pitch changes on Abel Tesafaye’s voice, which hasn’t happened on The Weeknd’s music before. It gives the track an otherworldly quality of evilness or confusion. Tesafaye’s character that he’s playing in these mixtapes has been cracking over the span of the mixtapes and you can clearly hear that he’s disintegrating at this point in the game.
Very interesting. I REALLY want to know how their next mixtape of the year, Echoes of Silence, sounds and if it’s anything like “Initiation”, it’s gonna be the possibly the darkest thing to come out in a long time. I look forward to it.
Second we have two new tracks from the French electronic duo, Justice. I haven’t really gotten into Justice as much as I have other electronic duos from France (COUGH) but still, I respect them that they are one of the most beloved electronic acts in the game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t not like Justice. I just haven’t delved into them quite yet.
This might be my opportunity to get into them. This morning, I woke to find the most blogged about songs at the moment were two new Justice tracks “Canon” and “Newlands” and decided that I should give them a try. I am very thankful of myself and the internet that I did. These two tracks are supremely well executed electronic dance songs and it definitely has the signature Justice sound. I can see why both Justice and Daft Punk can exist in the same world now: they both have very different sounds but they achieve the same thing. That thing is to rock the fridge out of any listener. These two tracks just put Justice on my radar. Well played, gentlemen.
CHECK CHECK ONE TWO!: Newlands – Justice
Canon – Justice
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Next is from the Japanese experimental rock band Boris, who released “Spoon” a shoegazy jam that I haven’t heard much like in this past year. The vocals, like any shoegaze song, are very hushed and mixed in with the burning swath of guitars and drums. I haven’t heard much of Boris, but I do know that they are, like my previous entry about Justice, much loved in their community, working with black metal bands like Sunn O))). I thought I’d check this song out and I’m really glad I did.
The lead singer, Atsuo, has a very delicate and glassy voice which foils the abrasive guitars that are crashing into the song. It’s very interesting. I also love that she sings in Japanese (makes sense, they’re from Japan) which gives another element of foreignness into the song. I don’t know, it’s just a combination I wouldn’t really think of listening to. But I did. I’m crazy.
I really like it, I think y’all should check it out as well.
Here’s another song I found by them that they released this year:
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The last thing that I wanted to share was a new track from Lana Del Rey, AKA “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra”. She came out with a new song “Lolyta” which is the poppiest thing she’s released thus far. It still has her signature retro flair on it, but there’s something about it that is a lot different from her past works. Previous singles “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans” are laments, not really peppy at all. This song, on the other hand, is very happy sounding and contrasts her other songs strongly.
I don’t really like it as much as her other songs but it still is worthy to check out. Which is why I’m posting it on the blog. I’m crazy.
A stream of consciousness music blog, active since 2010. Established in Ann Arbor, MI, currently in NYC.
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