Category: Music

“It sounds like the fucking Singularity touched down.” — Warren Ellis

Last fall, Apple did a promotion with Facebook, offering up free music samplers each week for free to anyone who was a member of the Apple Facebook group. (I’d say the promotion was successful, the group currently has a little over 411,000 members.) Each week, they covered a different genre of music, and in the process of this, I was introduced to The Go! Team through their song “Junior Kickstart”. It’s a great, energetic British band that hopefully we’ll see a lot more of. I would like to point out, however, that due to the nature of how I gained this song, I have no direct link for free download: if you want to hear it, I’m afraid you’ll have to spend a buck. Trust me when I say it’s well worth it.

“Junior Kickstart” is an entirely instrumental song, opening with an urgent guitar riff before moving into an explosion of instrumental grooves, replete with horns, drums, guitar, bass, tambourine, and harmonica (created through a blend of live instruments and excellent sampling). It’s hard to describe precisely why, but the feeling of the song feels very much like out of a soundtrack where the heroes suddenly turn things around and proceed to kick some serious ass. The pacing of the song is very energetic, and sonically there are a variety of layers for your ear to explore, or you can simply let them all fuse together into an avalanche of aural pleasure. I will say this: your enjoyment of The Go! Team increases exponentially the better your sound system. Their sound has a lot of tonal variety, so you’ll get more out of the music if you’re using a system that can really accommodate that. (Even the difference between my iPod headphones and a better set of over-ear headphones is noticeable, playing the same song at the same volume and equalization.)

If you’re looking for music that gets you excited and energized, “Junior Kickstart” is a great choice. It has a good deal of complexity to it, yet can still be enjoyed as a more simplistic amalgam. The Go! Team really delivers on the promise of blending synthetic and more traditional instruments, creating a great sound whether in the studio or live. If you haven’t heard them yet, please, go look them up.

[The Go! Team Live at KEXP Free MP3]

[Junior Kickstart on iTunes]

[The Go! Team Website]

Today’s song was discovered via Chris, who linked me to Drilling P.O.S. REDO by Minus the Bear over at Suicide Squeeze Records. While a good song, it got me curious about the band, so I ended up browsing through the site, and found a song that I ended up liking more: “Dr. L’Ling”, which is from their new album, Planet of Ice, which is due out in mid-August.

“Dr. L’Ling” starts out quiet, with an undulating, droning guitar, then adding a staccato drum, before kicking up to full volume with another, lightly distorted guitar that is vaguely reminiscient of “Creep” by Radiohead’s heavy pre-chorus thrash. The vocals aren’t entirely my cup of tea, but don’t really detract from the overall mood of the song, which mixes a sense of urgency with a vaguely ethereal, “space-y” vibe. (“Space-y” is perhaps a bit hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it, much like ProjeKct Two’s Space Groove.) The guitar work in particular really explores the space of the song, mixing melodic long notes with a rapid, abrupt progression that reminded me heavily of “Discipline” by King Crimson. The song finally winds down with more undulation fading into the distance, which gives the total song a mental image of a space patrol, idling along, called to duty, and then returning to its long quiet patrol.

Overall, it’s an engaging song, and I really don’t mind adding it to my musical library. I’ll look forward to hearing more from this band, and see where their musical evolution takes them in their latest album.

[Dr. L’Ling by Minus the Bear]

[Minus the Bear at Suicide Squeeze Records]

I think it will come as no surprise to most folks familiar with both me and the band that I’m a fan of Modest Mouse. I was initially turned on to them fairly late in their career, with their album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, notably their one-two punch of “World At Large” followed by “Float On,” which when combined, served as a personal mantra and definition through a very trying period in my life. I quickly rounded out my collection of their prior albums, and eagerly anticipated their latest album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. The new album, while not exceeding my preference for Good News…, does not disappoint, with its frenetic, impassioned songs. Needless to say, I was glad to see one of these songs, “Invisible”, show up on KEXP’s Song of the Day Podcast.

“Invisible” starts with a muted drum and guitar build up, which then explodes into a sonic crescendo as the singing starts. Build-up and release seems to be a recurring theme within the song, with several points where the melody builds a sense of urgency before a staccato release of heavy, directed drums and guitar, with a bassline running throughout acting as a glue, bonding the elements together.

In short, the song rocks, and rocks hard. It engages the ear on several levels in a way that could be overwhelming if not prepared for it, combined with a pacing that can’t help but encourage a frenetic mood in the listener. “Invisible” is an excellent example of Modest Mouse’s musical style, and would be a great way to introduce the band musically to a newcomer.

[Invisible by Modest Mouse]

[Subscribe to the KEXP Song of the Day Podcast.]

“I’m the life of the party, I’m always smiling. On the surface, I’m as happy as can be.”

You all know the people “Apple Pie” (off The Bastard Fairies’ Memento Mori) is talking about: they seem upbeat and cheerful (much like this song), but the reality is that they’re fairly shallow, and avoid dealing with their emotions, or anything too heavy or serious. It describes an individual who is shallow by choice. The mood and melody of the song encourages this image, with a relatively simple tune running through it, with only the chorus having more complexity and layers: for most of the song, it is simply a synth and lo-fi vocals. With each cycle through the chorus, however, they add more and more instruments, until the final chorus is a diverse cacophany of sounds that works well in a sonic fashion. This ties really well into the metaphor of the song, since you never run into these sorts of people alone.

I like this song, for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a catchy tune, with a simple rhythm and lyrics that are easy to sing along to — it’s easy to end up nodding your head with the beat or even singing along. In particular when I was first introduced to this song via KEXP, I was dealing with several individuals that I found I was immediately identifying with the song: not bad people, but emotionally shallow, who’d rather sweep things under the rug than address the issues at hand. This gave it enough weight that I ended up tracking down the band online, where I discovered that they were offering their entire album available for download, free (links below). I’d definitely recommend looking them up, and giving the album a few listens, to see if it’s something you might like: especially for the price, it’s worth your time.

[“Apple Pie” [Free MP3]]

[The Bastard Fairies Website]