Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
Albums of the Year December 19th, 2011
It’s the time of year where I habitually start making a list of my favourite albums of the year. Closely followed by other random lists, because everything is better when it is in a list.
I started thinking about this list a few months ago and had come to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t be able to get together a list of 10 albums that I would really recommend to other people. I’m not quite sure why I’d come to that conclusion as looking back this year has been yet another really good one for music.
I think I end up saying this every year but I think we are living through a bit of a golden age for music. Social networks allow us much greater opportunities to have things recommended to us and bands can get much more direct access to an audience. I know this year places like Bandcamp have had a big impact on the way I buy music. Actually this is the year where I reckon about 80% of my music has been purchased electronically so that says something. Mainly that I don’t have to increase shelves at the same rate.
One thing that has popped out at me is that I’ve been listening to much more folk music. This might be an unavoidable consequence of aging or it might be an improvement in folk music. I have a feeling it is likely to the former.
So here we go. My top 10 albums of the year. [edit] I should have mentioned that they are in some sort of order and count down from 10 to 1. I could have just edited this and added numbers but….[/edit]
John Grant – Queen of Denmark
The best way to find out about an album is someone texting you out of the blue and telling you about it. Though this only works if the album is good. If it isn’t we just all agree to not talk about it. This one is very good. The best way to sum it up is it sounds a bit like Midlake. I really like Midlake because they sound a bit like Fleetwood Mac. Weirdly I don’t really like Fleetwood Mac, I have no idea how this works.
Dissolved – Snowy Psychoplasmics
Through a deal I don’t want to talk about I’ve had access to all of the Daddy Tank Records releases over the last year or so. When I was given this I was explicitly told I wouldn’t like it. I haven’t added this to my list just to be awkward though I have a feeling that not many people would be surprised if I did. I’ve added this because I stopped listening to electronic music years ago and this changed my mind.
tUne-yArDs – Who Kills
What I still don’t quite understand how someone could sit down and think that any element of this album would work. In my mind “world music” has a really bad reputation. When people say world music it conjours up images of earnest yet insincere harmonies and irritating drumming. This album has nothing to do with world music but I always have niggling feeling that it could veer in that directions at any moment, it doesn’t. This the most inventive thing I have heard in many many years.
Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
I do make a habit of going through the Pitchfork reviews as more often than not they make me buy something that I’m really grateful for. This is an excellent example. I know nothing about them other than the fact that they’re not scared to throw in a guitar solo every now and then.
The King Blues – Punk & Poetry
Do you remember when the country was on fire and everyone wanted to listen to anarcho punk poetry with a hint of ukulele? Well I do. That sounds like the most atrocious combination of music that has ever been conceived but it isn’t. As far as I’m concerned no other band summed up the sentiment of the summer like The King Blues did. They are also really really angry, this is best demonstrated in their song We Are Fucking Angry.
St Vincent – Strange Mercy
Another Pitchfork recommendation. I initially bought it gave it a listen and thought I wouldn’t bother again. Then on a train journey I noticed it and decided to give it another go. This album is great. This would be what Goldfrapp were like if they were good. I don’t have anything in particular against Goldfrapp but their peculiar brand of bland means nobody has much more than a passing interest in them.
Many of the songs on this album sound very much of the Goldfrapp mould but then go offf in a crazy direction, I love them just for that.
Iron and Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
I’ve been reliably told that Iron and Wine are proper folk music. They don’t sound like it to me. They sound about as far from folk music as it is safe to be. This is a great album and I have no idea who to compare it to.
Battles – Gloss Drop
I love Battles. I loved Battles before I even knew who they were. They did the music to one of the levels on Little Big Planet and I’d always wondered who they were. It was @shymmetry mentioning them in Twitter that made me speculatively buy their fist album and discover it was a band I had been looking for. This new album isn’t that much of a departure from the first but is a departure from everything else you’ve ever heard before. Unless you listened to King Crimson in the 80s. They do sound quite a bit like King Crimson but that’s not a bad thing is it?
This is also the band I most regret not getting to see this year.
Eddie Vedder – Ukulele Songs
I’ve been properly playing the ukulele now for nearly two years with Moselele. It’s strange that something that started off as an attempt to do ironic covers on an unusual(ish) instrument has now become and interest. Having said that it is the ukulele that made me aware of this album but it’s the quality of the songs that have made me listen to it as much as I have. I don’t really know Pearl Jam and wouldn’t say I’m great fan of them but this does give some insight into how some of their songs are written. Strangely I’m too lazy to bother to find out whether the songs on here are actual Pearl Jam songs or are just for the this album. At a guess, I reckon it’s a mixture.
This album does sound folky, well it would, it’s a man strumming a long on a tiny guitar.
White Denim – D
White Denim seem to have been round for a while and unusually I bought this based on hearing them on 6 Music. I haven’t really listened to 6 Music a lot recently so tend to get less stuff recommended to me through them. White Denim have definitely got a modern Lynyrd Skynyrd about them, yes I do realise that will put pretty well everyone off listening to them.
They differ from Lynyrd Skynyrd in that:-
1) They’re not dead
2) They are very musically diverse
3) They sound nothing like Lynyrd Skynyrd
So there you go. Not a hell of a lot between any of them.
If you want a taste from most of them then here is YouTube playlist with one song from all except Dissolved.
Posted in Music | Comments (3)
Home of Metal
September 12th, 2011
I thought it might be an idea to write something on here that wasn’t based on my simplistic 6th Form analysis of recent political events.So instead I’m going to write about Heavy Metal, which is much more sensible.
Yesterday I went to visit the Home of Metal exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I’m not a great museum visitor, they tend to bore me, but an exhibition devoted to Heavy Metal seemed like something I should do. Though it has been on since July and I only got round to it a week before it finished.
I think I should start this with stating that it is a great exhibition, it’s well made and does a good job of holding your hand through a very different bit of Birmingham’s history. I also recognise that Capsule, who put it together, have done a vast amount for music in Birmingham over the last decade, they’ve let me see Lightning Bolt and Shellac for a start.
With that caveat I have to say I left the Home of Metal feeling at a bit of a loss.
One thing I’ve learnt in the 20 years I’ve been living in Birmingham is that it has always been seeking an identity to distinguish itself from other cities. It’s constantly fighting to define itself as the second city of the UK, when I say fighting I’m not really sure that Manchester is aware that there is a fight going on nor is actually that bothered about how UK cities are prioritised.
Birmingham is jealous that other UK cities appear to have a more defined musical heritage. I don’t think other cities have a greater heritage of music but they do seem to be able to bundle things together. Liverpool had Mersey Beat and Manchester had the MADchester thing of the early 90s. Birmingham hasn’t had anything equivalent. Birmingham has had international fame with ELO, Duran Duran and of course Black Sabbath but there hasn’t been a unifying marketing ploy behind them.
These themes, or close groups of bands, are nothing more than a device by record companies to promote bands that otherwise wouldn’t get anywhere. As such I don’t think Birmingham has really missed out.
This lack of a Birmingham “sound” now seems to have been addressed by the attempt to claim the genre of Heavy Metal as being a product of Birmingham (and the Black Country to an extent).
Heavy Metal is a really difficult type of music to define. It is incredibly subjective to distinguish where hard rock stops and heavy metal begins. Essentially it is a semantic difference but one that still seems to be a pre-occupation for some people. It is also a semantic difference that seems to be at the heart of Birmingham’s claim on musical history.
Whilst growing up in Eastbourne (the home of The Mobiles and Top Loader) I listened to a lot of Heavy Metal, I’m not proud of it but it is a fact. In the 80s we were probably past the first blossom of Metal as a genre and just at the beginning of what I’ve been repeatedly been told was a new wave of British Metal (the NWOBHM).
I missed the early 70s on account of not being born so am on delicate grounds to refute Birmingham’s claims to have invented a musical genre. Whilst I was aware that Black Sabbath existed I couldn’t have told you they came from Birmingham and I would have struggled to explain to you why they were more important historically than Thin Lizzy, Rainbow or any number of other bands.
Before I started writing this I did spend a bit of time looking at Wikipedia, it was useful to try and get a sense of what happened before I was born. I have many albums from before I was born but little knowledge of when they came out and no real understanding of their impact or relative sales. I was struck that Black Sabbath do indeed seem to be considered as some sort of originator of this type of music.
This confuses me quite a lot. I am at a complete loss to figure out what is that different about Black Sabbath (the album) and Deep Purple’s In Rock, or King Crimson’s In The Court of the Crimson King? All dabbled with occult(ish) references, all relied on riff based songs and all came out at roughly the same time (King Crimson the year before and Deep Purple a few months later). Certainly sales don’t seem to distinguish Black Sabbath from the others. This is before you consider Born to be Wild which came out two years before Black Sabbath and mentions Heavy Metal in the lyrics of the title song.
Obviously one band doesn’t mean the birth of a movement (I know Heavy Metal cannot be defined as a movement). The Home of Metal appear to emphasise this by devoting a fair amount of space to Judas Priest who are from Walsall (a bit). I don’t know what to make of Judas Priest. As I grew up I had always assumed they were a joke band, apparently they’re not a joke band. They didn’t seem to innovate anymore than any other band around and when their first album came out in 1974 they were considerably behind bands such as Kiss and Aerosmith in terms of world wide profile.
Which leads on to the main point that is only hinted at in the Home of Metal. Of the time when Black Sabbath came to prominence the biggest band in the world, after The Beatles, were Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II predated Black Sabbath and much of it seems to be a template for Metal/Hard Rock through the last four decades. The problem with Led Zeppelin is that their Birmingham/Black Country roots are shakey. Yes Robert Plant grew up in West Bromwich and John Bonham was born in Redditch but the other two were born and bred southerners. Can Sidcup claim to be the home of rock because John Paul Jones was born there and Keith Richards went to college there? No, that would be tenuous.
The second part of Home of Metal relates to Birmingham’s role in the 90s with Napalm Death. I’ve always had a soft spot for Napalm Death but it is really hard to say they set the world on fire. They defined a new type of metal (Grindcore) but were relatively unknown outside of Birmingham, except to a core group of fans (and are massive in Mexico). Were they more influential than Anthrax, Metallica or Slayer? It would be difficult to claim they were.
The reality of the early 90s was that Heavy Metal was largely defined in LA through cocaine fuelled hair bands like Guns N’ Roses and Motely Crue. It wasn’t pretty but was strangely popular. It also, almost managed to kill the concept of Metal for a generation.
My point, and it has taken me a while to get to it, is that Birmingham did play an important role in the creation of Heavy Metal, but so did Hertford (Deep Purple), Sheffield (Def Leppard), London (UFO, Iron Maiden, Uriah Heep, Motorhead, and even Barnsley (Saxon).
It is no more the Home of Metal than any of these cities.
Birmingham does have a really disparate history of bands and it would be better off celebrating the difference in these rather than attempting to a create an artificial construct after the fact.
I know this comes across as quite sniffy about something that was created through a lot of hard work and with only the best of intentions. On the plus side it did provoke me to think about this in considerably more depth than is probably sensible, so on that level it worked very well.
I thought it might be an idea to write something on here that wasn’t based on my simplistic 6th Form analysis of recent political events.So instead I’m going to write about Heavy Metal, which is much more sensible.
Yesterday I went to visit the Home of Metal exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I’m not a great museum visitor, they tend to bore me, but an exhibition devoted to Heavy Metal seemed like something I should do. Though it has been on since July and I only got round to it a week before it finished.
I think I should start this with stating that it is a great exhibition, it’s well made and does a good job of holding your hand through a very different bit of Birmingham’s history. I also recognise that Capsule, who put it together, have done a vast amount for music in Birmingham over the last decade, they’ve let me see Lightning Bolt and Shellac for a start.
With that caveat I have to say I left the Home of Metal feeling at a bit of a loss.
One thing I’ve learnt in the 20 years I’ve been living in Birmingham is that it has always been seeking an identity to distinguish itself from other cities. It’s constantly fighting to define itself as the second city of the UK, when I say fighting I’m not really sure that Manchester is aware that there is a fight going on nor is actually that bothered about how UK cities are prioritised.
Birmingham is jealous that other UK cities appear to have a more defined musical heritage. I don’t think other cities have a greater heritage of music but they do seem to be able to bundle things together. Liverpool had Mersey Beat and Manchester had the MADchester thing of the early 90s. Birmingham hasn’t had anything equivalent. Birmingham has had international fame with ELO, Duran Duran and of course Black Sabbath but there hasn’t been a unifying marketing ploy behind them.
These themes, or close groups of bands, are nothing more than a device by record companies to promote bands that otherwise wouldn’t get anywhere. As such I don’t think Birmingham has really missed out.
This lack of a Birmingham “sound” now seems to have been addressed by the attempt to claim the genre of Heavy Metal as being a product of Birmingham (and the Black Country to an extent).
Heavy Metal is a really difficult type of music to define. It is incredibly subjective to distinguish where hard rock stops and heavy metal begins. Essentially it is a semantic difference but one that still seems to be a pre-occupation for some people. It is also a semantic difference that seems to be at the heart of Birmingham’s claim on musical history.
Whilst growing up in Eastbourne (the home of The Mobiles and Top Loader) I listened to a lot of Heavy Metal, I’m not proud of it but it is a fact. In the 80s we were probably past the first blossom of Metal as a genre and just at the beginning of what I’ve been repeatedly been told was a new wave of British Metal (the NWOBHM).
I missed the early 70s on account of not being born so am on delicate grounds to refute Birmingham’s claims to have invented a musical genre. Whilst I was aware that Black Sabbath existed I couldn’t have told you they came from Birmingham and I would have struggled to explain to you why they were more important historically than Thin Lizzy, Rainbow or any number of other bands.
Before I started writing this I did spend a bit of time looking at Wikipedia, it was useful to try and get a sense of what happened before I was born. I have many albums from before I was born but little knowledge of when they came out and no real understanding of their impact or relative sales. I was struck that Black Sabbath do indeed seem to be considered as some sort of originator of this type of music.
This confuses me quite a lot. I am at a complete loss to figure out what is that different about Black Sabbath (the album) and Deep Purple’s In Rock, or King Crimson’s In The Court of the Crimson King? All dabbled with occult(ish) references, all relied on riff based songs and all came out at roughly the same time (King Crimson the year before and Deep Purple a few months later). Certainly sales don’t seem to distinguish Black Sabbath from the others. This is before you consider Born to be Wild which came out two years before Black Sabbath and mentions Heavy Metal in the lyrics of the title song.
Obviously one band doesn’t mean the birth of a movement (I know Heavy Metal cannot be defined as a movement). The Home of Metal appear to emphasise this by devoting a fair amount of space to Judas Priest who are from Walsall (a bit). I don’t know what to make of Judas Priest. As I grew up I had always assumed they were a joke band, apparently they’re not a joke band. They didn’t seem to innovate anymore than any other band around and when their first album came out in 1974 they were considerably behind bands such as Kiss and Aerosmith in terms of world wide profile.
Which leads on to the main point that is only hinted at in the Home of Metal. Of the time when Black Sabbath came to prominence the biggest band in the world, after The Beatles, were Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II predated Black Sabbath and much of it seems to be a template for Metal/Hard Rock through the last four decades. The problem with Led Zeppelin is that their Birmingham/Black Country roots are shakey. Yes Robert Plant grew up in West Bromwich and John Bonham was born in Redditch but the other two were born and bred southerners. Can Sidcup claim to be the home of rock because John Paul Jones was born there and Keith Richards went to college there? No, that would be tenuous.
The second part of Home of Metal relates to Birmingham’s role in the 90s with Napalm Death. I’ve always had a soft spot for Napalm Death but it is really hard to say they set the world on fire. They defined a new type of metal (Grindcore) but were relatively unknown outside of Birmingham, except to a core group of fans (and are massive in Mexico). Were they more influential than Anthrax, Metallica or Slayer? It would be difficult to claim they were.
The reality of the early 90s was that Heavy Metal was largely defined in LA through cocaine fuelled hair bands like Guns N’ Roses and Motely Crue. It wasn’t pretty but was strangely popular. It also, almost managed to kill the concept of Metal for a generation.
My point, and it has taken me a while to get to it, is that Birmingham did play an important role in the creation of Heavy Metal, but so did Hertford (Deep Purple), Sheffield (Def Leppard), London (UFO, Iron Maiden, Uriah Heep, Motorhead, and even Barnsley (Saxon).
It is no more the Home of Metal than any of these cities.
Birmingham does have a really disparate history of bands and it would be better off celebrating the difference in these rather than attempting to a create an artificial construct after the fact.
I know this comes across as quite sniffy about something that was created through a lot of hard work and with only the best of intentions. On the plus side it did provoke me to think about this in considerably more depth than is probably sensible, so on that level it worked very well.
Posted in Birmingham, Music | Comments (3)
Bring Me the Music of 2010
January 10th, 2011
I’m not sure if it is legitimate to persist with “best of 2010” lists this far into 2011. It seems like the moment has gone. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to bother this year, it just means I recognise it is an unseemly use of the worlds precious web space.
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Blues May 3rd, 2010
It’s fair to say that as soon as I stated recording games I’ve finished I lost interest in playing games really quickly.
As nothing seems to have got completed in ages I decided to make a playlist.
I used to obsessively listen to Blues. It was the music that started me playing the guitar because it was deceptively simple. Over the years I’ve lost most of the really good stuff I used to own, mainly because it was on tape and I don’t own a tape player.
I thought it would be plan to try and put together everything I could remember into one playlist. So here you go, the blues, as remembered by a bloke from Eastbourne.
Posted in Music, Spotify | Comments (0)
The Courage of Others February 1st, 2010
It probably isn’t appropriate to blow your album of the week on a Monday.
What if a better one comes out tomorrow? What if a better one came out today and I just didn’t notice it? That’s entirely possible, I’ve only heard one album today and that’s the one I’m going for.
So I heartily recommend The Courage of Others by Midlake.
Midlake are the band I always think of that best demonstrate how copying music is really good for bands. I’d never heard of them until someone gave me a copied CD of The Trial of Van Occupanther. As a result of that I ended up buying myself a copy and have bought it numerous times as Birthday presents for people as well as buying everything else Midlake have ever done. One copied CD has actually sold them many CDs.
In contrast in the same time I’ve bought no Metallica CDs. Though that is more as a result of them being shit than anything to do with copying CDs or their fruitless fight against piracy. I just raise it as an issue. A rather abstract issue.
So if you want to explore The Courage of Others you can listen to it here.
Or you can watch this. Which isn’t on The Courage of Others but I really like it.
Posted in Music | Comments (1)
Last time I mention it…. January 4th, 2010
After banging on about my favourite albums of the last decade I decided to make a much longer list of my favourite albums. It’s probably much too self indulgent to go through the entire list on here but I’ve attempted to convert it into a playlist.
Yes, it’s yet another play list on Spotify.
Hopefully I can come up with more creative blog updates soon.
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Funk December 27th, 2009
I’ve been mucking about with Spotify.
I’m not completely sure if it is that useful and I can’t really see a great deal of difference from Last FM Radio.
The playlists do seem like a good way of sharing stuff you’re listening to and, hopefully develop it a bit. Unfortunately music in Spotify is limited to say the least. In my first attempt at a playlist I’d say about 50% of the stuff I wanted to use is missing.
Anyway I bring you the gift of Funk. It’s a collaborative list so feel free to add stuff that you think might fit. Please don’t dump whole albums in there. I’ve tried to plan this a bit with songs that do fit together.
The list is:-
Posted in Music, Spotify | Comments (0)
Music / Time = List November 17th, 2009
I originally posted this as a thread on The Stirrer but then it occurred to me that this is exactly the reason I own a blog which I rarely update. So I’ve plagiarised my own work.
I like a good list. I particularly a good list of things at the end of a decade.
There is nothing quite like judging things on an entirely subjective criteria and placing that within the confines of an entirely arbitrary time frame.
The NME have come up with their list of the 50 best albums of the last decade.
I think it’s a really good list and shows what a really good period we seem to be in for music at the moment.
I’m a little annoyed that The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots didn’t make it in there at all. I would have had them in the top ten. Though I’m a little bit Flaming Lips crazy today as I’m going to see them tonight. Go me.
I’ve bought 25 of their 50 and will certainly look at getting more.
So for no apparent reason here are my top 10 albums of the last decade, largely using their list to remind me when things came out.
1) Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise
2) Grandaddy – Sopftware Slump
3) Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
4) Acoustic Ladyland – Last Chance Disco
5) Jaga Jazzist – What We Must
6) Muse – Absolution
7) The Bees – Free the Bees
8) Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
9) Avalanches – Since I Left You
10) Cinematic Orchestra – Man With a Movie Camera
Hmm there is more jazz on there than I expected.
It’s a shame that you can only get away with lists in multiples of 5 or 10 as I would like to include the fantastic The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn by Bright Eyes and Want Two by Rufus Wainwright.
Technically that’s two Bright Eyes albums which would have given me 14 in total. I don’t think you’re allowed to have a list with 14 things on it.
So… it’s been a really good decade for music.
Posted in Music | Comments (4)
Aces High September 16th, 2008
Every now and then you see a story that just could have been taken straight out of Viz. Yesterday was just such a day, or Sunday, dependant on whether you want to be really pedantic.
Of course I don’t mean the fantastic story of the woman who bought a bunny thats ears weren’t floppy enough. That was a great story and I’ve thought at length about what I would do in her situation. The only conclusion I’ve come to so far is that it was a clear case of criminal deceit and calling the police is the only rational course of action. Otherwise people will think they can palm off erect rabbits with absolutely no come back.
Clearly that wouldn’t have got into Viz as there is no substantial double entendre in the whole story. Having said that the one I’m thinking of hasn’t really got any sexual content either so my entire theory is in danger of being rubbish.
The most outstanding story of the last couple of days has to be the humanitarianism of Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson single handedly mounting a Berlin style airlift to rescue stranded holiday makers.
It is a fantastic example of how when events go truly tits up we can only really rely on celebrities to make everything better.
I love the idea that Bruce works a few days a week as an airline pilot just because he can. I have no idea how much money the bloke has got but as The Maiden have been pretty well constant for well over 20 years he must have a few quid in the bank.
In their seminal single Aces High, Iron Maiden demonstrated a truly in-depth knowledge or air to air combat. I imagine that this has come in really handy in the last couple of days as he skirted Israeli air space with a boot full of tourists from Egypt.
I doubt it happens but I’d love to believe that every time he takes off, Aces High blasts over the PA.
Tags: Iron Maiden
Posted in Media, Music | Comments (0)