Tag: music exploration

  • full song | “again” [updated]

    Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

    NOTE: It seems that iOS dislikes most audio files. I have replaced the audio file with one coded in .MP3, so let me know if there are still issues on your platform of choice.

    Happy Sunday evening (or Monday morning) to you all.

    Quite possibly against my best interests considering that I am coming out a bit with a truly frightening prospect for anyone who knows: a full song recording that I’ve been working on with some bloke I know named Michael singing. He’s not the best singer out there, but hopefully his contribution to this composition was at least serviceable.

    As you know, when time permits, I’ve been working on trying to work on getting a few music snippets out that play with a modified 80s-era post-punk sound influenced primarily by early Cure and Joy Division, with hints of all of the other bands from that era to more modern bands like The Eden House and Kælan Mikla. More than just playing around with sound, I felt I should finally commit to making a full song.

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  • Towards the Within — Hi Ren

    I’ve slowed down a bit on my listening to music, trying to find something that fits this nebulous definition I have of “different like the 80s post-punk era, but newer” music. Of course, while I am watching videos of nerdy girls building out their rooms on YouTube, the site is more than happy to continue providing me with music ideas to listen to, including Falco’s “Rock Me, Amadeus” (has there been anyone more absurd and apparently oblivious to their absurdity than Falco? Perhaps Boy George? Right Said Fred?).

    Of course, there is only so much Viking-inspired music I can listen to, and Falco is not really someone I want to listen to on a regular basis — nor is that terribly “new”. So, I end up watching my videogame hype videos and largely ignore the offerings on deck.

    That is, until the algorithm reminded me of a song that Chris Nelson introduced me to a couple of years back by a chap named Ren. Watching and listening to the song again (and this is a case where the song is best as a multimedia experience), I am still really, really impressed with this song. It does a lot of things that I wish I could do as a musician, but lack the talent to be able to do — both in the guitar playing and the presentation. The song itself is reminiscent of a manic Arlo Guthrie singing about a restaurant owned by Alice. Except not done for laughs and glitched on the part where they are jumping up and down yelling, “Kill! Kill!”

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  • Towards the Within — Ulvetime (Hour of the Wolf)

    Interestingly enough, the YouTube algorithm brought me back full circle on a music listening binge and decided that I probably had enough of that fancy and schmancy post-punk modern stuff in English and decided to point me back at something more along the lines of modern non-English folk with real instruments and minimal production on the overall sound.

    Trigger warning: Song contains Northern European folk sounds that feel old enough to be tribal in essence. May contain ethnic instruments and little to no electronic music to sooth the transition.

    Upon listening, I figured, who am I to argue with such a suggestion? Which brings me to Sonleikr’s Ulvetime. If you look at the song title with crossed eyes and think really hard to the Old Norse language course you started but never finished, you can pick out a translation: ulve (Danish) from ulfr (Old Norse) which obviously means “wolf”. And time (Danish) is equally obvious as “hour”.

    I always knew you were clever.

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  • Towards the Within — It Won’t Hurt

    Here’s another of my stumble-on bands while listening to music discovery nominally inspired by a resurgence of 1980’s-era post punk and bands like Kælan Mikla, Mochat Doma, as in addition to older bands such as Dead Can Dance.

    Another criteria for inclusion is a preference for bands that use a language other than English for their songs, although that is not an absolute requirement. I am more interested in discovering music that I would not have otherwise encountered save for going where the labyrinth leads me.

    If you want to listen to other bands that I’ve found, you can follow my YouTube station (all ad revenue goes to the evil overlords, not me), or hit play in the embed at the bottom of this post.

    I did not expect it to take me to Аметистовые Вены (translation: Amethyst Veins), a Russian band (specifically, from Naberezhnye Chelny) that popped up in my feed.

    Аметистовые Вены, photo used under fair use principles; all copyrights are retained by the original holder.
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  • Bass Instincts

    Bass and electric guitar
    Photo by Juan Montana on Unsplash

    Any of you who read comments (or more than surface level at what I write) will have likely figured out that I went and bought myself a low- to mid-range electric bass last night. It may seem rather sudden, but it has been part of my thinking for quite a while. Years, in truth. And several months in earnest. I don’t just drop money on anything over $25 without some serious thought.

    So it wasn’t on a whim, as much as it might have seemed to have been.

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