Category: listening

  • Darkwave songlet

    I recently upgraded my DAW and have been meaning to play around with it AND get more familiar with synth soundcrafting rather than using the synth presets.

    Some of this is crafted sound, some of it is presets, about half-and-half.

    I’m just playing around, not sure if this will end up as something.

    Detail free description: I was looking for a mid-speed darkwave sound that was upbeat enough to dance to with an emulated classic Roland 808 drum machine sound (although I may modify it).

    Slightly more detail: The arp and one layer of the pads are crafted sounds and the original bass sound was as well, but I wanted something punchier and livelier than what I was getting, so I went with a preset and tweaked it. The guitar is a great preset I live for guitar, so I did almost nothing with it. 134 bpm, for the curious.

    This is two sections, repeated. If I were to flesh this out, I would add some bridges and empty space between. But this is something just cobbled together in about two or three hours and, while it was interesting to play around, I’m not sure how much mileage I can pull from it (it would need lyrics, singing and full engineering work to make it sound better). We’ll see. I can already hear the arp levels were lower than I intended. And there is zero panning.

    Anyway, another one of my songs in less that two minutes thingies. This one clocks in currently at around 65 seconds, so you’ll only have around that much of your time to demand back from the timelords.

  • Towards the Within — New Model Army, “Vagabonds”

    We are old, we are young,
    We are in this together
    Vagabonds and children
    Prisoners forever
    With pulses a-raging and
    Eyes full of wonder
    Kicking out behind us again

    Out planting trees a few weeks ago, I had a portable speaker on my beltloop and streaming music on it. I hadn’t listened to Justin and Co. for a spell and decided it was time to remedy that omission via giving the album “Thunder and Consolation” a spin (if that’s what you call it when you stream music and not put a record on a turntable).

    Talk about earworming… Vagabonds is one of those songs that easily to sing the chorus with the band on, once you know the lyrics (see above) and NMA have been firmly stuck in my head since.

    I came to NMA late in the game.

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  • Angine de Poitrine | Umm?

    Okay, YouTube has been at me for weeks to watch these guys (gals?), so I finally caved and watched the video.

    These folks are off the deep end of the spectrum. Not the most experimental I’ve ever heard for music, because it is still recognizable a rock-adjacent in sound. They do some neat tricks with loops and effects on top of a microtonal guitar/bass combo with polyrhythm drums. The whole, adjusting knobs on the effects with bare feet is an interesting trick.

    And they’ve cultivated their “weird vibe” very precisely between the phallic masks and eye-melting pattern clash. They also, apparently, have their own language for interviews for which their manager “translates”.

    Looks fun. And they appear talented (from what I can hear, but there is an emphasis on disruption and subversion, so I might not be hearing it quite right).

    But.

    For me, it started to sound clever but samey after a point. More gimmick than hook, if you know what I mean.

    I jumped to a song above, but feel free to start and the beginning. Give me your read on this. Is microtonal (other notes than the Western chromatic scale) the future? Do you think they’ll be around in three years? Or just a flash in the pan?

    Seriously, though, they make Zappa sound relatively grounded. Makes me long for Diamanda Galás and her Steak Knives experimental (opera-trained) vocal/screaming routine, honestly. Wait. Maybe don’t listen to that link. It may give you reason to judge me.

    Meh.

    Curious if you think they are good, bad or if you’re indifferent to the whole thing. Drop me a note.

  • The Milkman — Mice feat. Julianne Regan

    Hey isn't this neat
    But we've got to be discreet
    'Cause something this supercalifragilistic
    Can get sado-masochistic so quickly

        So if you want to know me
        Well you'd just better take things slowly

    Man, I sure miss the tongue in cheek saccharine-laced snarky sugar pop of albums like this. A little more over-the-top than Strawberry Switchblade (who were more polka-dot laced bubblegum goth), but I loved this shit.

    As you might recall from a few days ago, Julianne sang for the more folksy-hippie-goth All About Eve. Yeah, I’m in a J.R. mood this week.

  • And… Billy Bragg is with us, too

    Now, Billy Bragg is a folk musician I do listen to. He wrote a classic tune for Minneapolis in the past few days as well. If you haven’t listened to Billy Bragg before, I recommend you remedy with that below.

    When they came for the immigrants
    I got in their face
    When they came for the refugees
    I got in their face
    When they came for the five-year-olds
    I got in their face
    When they came to my neighborhood
    I just got in their face.

    I will bear witness to terror
    I will bear witness to tyranny
    I will bear witness to murder
    I will bear witness to fascism.

    For reference, a five-year-old was used for bait by ICE to arrest his father. They wouldn’t let the young boy go into the house, and then they took him to Texas with his father against judge’s orders.

  • Towards the Within — Citizen I.C.E., Dropkick Murphys

    Too scared to join the military
    Too dumb to be a cop
    Citizen I.C.E.

    This is an old song of theirs, formerly called “Citizen C.I.A”, and lyrically reworked to reflect current events. The rest of the lyrics are in-video.

    I have to admit, I should probably listen to more Dropkick Murphys than I do, and that will probably change in the coming weeks. Every time I encounter news about the band, I see them in an increasingly positive light. I don’t have to like every song a band writes to know them to be stand-up folks that deserve my support.

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  • songlets — may faire

    It was a bit of a surprise when an old song I had written way back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth came into my head yesterday and wouldn’t get out. Much to my amazement, when I pulled out the guitar, the chord progression and rough playing style came back to me almost instantly.

    For a bit of perspective, the song, “May Faire” has never been performed. So, it’s not like I spent uncountable hours rehearsing the song. I may have toyed around with it whenever I could not come up with something new for a few years, but it was not on the forefront of my thinking.

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  • half-penny thoughts — 05jan26

    I’m probably overlooking quite a few artists, but it sure seems like the vast majority of them these days are very serious about their music.

    That’s not to say that I didn’t listen to and work with musicians in the past who were very serious about their music, but it seemed there were more folks in earlier eras who were a lot less serious about it. Or, they were serious musician who leaned into satire instead of saying things like, “We are artistes, not baboons. Go away and baboon elsewhere.”

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  • Towards the Within — Sólstöður, Kælan Mikla

    A little Icelandic darkwave in honor of the upcoming solstice, perhaps?

    Á sólstöðum í svartnætti tunglið geislum grætur
    Vetrarnótt; við erum þínar sönnu svörtu dætur

    Winter solstice in the black night
    the moon cries its beams
    Winter night; we are your true dark daughters

    Of course you may have some, my darkling dearies. Enjoy.

  • Towards the Within — Succulence by Foetus

    J.G. Thirlwell, also known as Clint Ruin, Frank Want, and Foetus (multiple variants of the name), among other pseudonyms is an Aussie musician that has been putting out albums of an experimental nature since the early 80s.

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