MUSIC BLOG 1

This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, so here it goes. This will basically be a place for me to pontificate and wax poetic about music I like as I buy new records, set up playlists, go to concerts, or just have a notion that pops into my head about something music related. I can't say how regular I'll post these or how content heavy each subsequent post will be – I'll just see how it goes as it happens.
This weekend I picked up a bunch of new records, so I'll start there. I have an ongoing list of albums to purchase, but there was a particular catalyst this weekend for visiting Amoeba.

WOLFSHEIM
Back in my Goth-clubbing days, I came across a group called WOLFSHEIM, who are pretty darkwave/synth pop. They had a single off of their 2001 album "Spectators" called "Once in a Lifetime" that I found particularly intriguing in it's catchiness, danciness, and beautiful vocalizations. Here is the music video for it:




I picked up the whole album a while back, but was fairly under whelmed by the whole package – although there are a few outstanding gems on it besides 'Once,' most notably "Heroin, She Said," and "For You." I didn't try out any of their other albums because I've consistently noticed among industrial/EBM/Goth/etc. groups the ability to be extremely off and on in their work…and as off and on this one album was, I was reluctant to purchase more since I already had the song that I loved, as well as a few others.
SO last week one day at lunch I found myself mucking around on Youtube, looked up Wolfsheim, and came across this fantastic pair of music videos – the songs and videos both act as direct prequels/sequels to each other:

"FIND YOU'RE HERE"



"FIND YOU'RE GONE"



Apparently the first, "find you're here" was released only as a single, but "gone" was on the group's last album, 2003's "Casting Shadows." As soon as I head the track I knew I had to have it because it fits in very well with the exact sensibilities of synth pop that I like – slowly melodic synths, a good back beat, nice solid vocals, and probably most of all – very melancholic, morose, and self-defeating lyrics (see also some of my other favorite synth pop tracks like INFORMATION SOCIETY's "Going Going Gone" and "How Long," HUMAN LEAGUE's "Louise" and "Tell Me When," ERASURE'S "chains of love," and more recently, ROBYN'S "With Every Heartbeat" and "Be Mine." [I will more than likely devote a whole post to discussing melancholic, heartbroken synth pop at a later date in which I'll go into greater detail and talk about a lot more bands]

I picked up "Casting Shadows," but have only listened to the album once all the way through so far, so I don't have a whole lot to speak about it as a whole…although I already think it suffers from the same problem as "Spectators" in that the quality of songs shifts dramatically throughout the album. Regardless, "Find You're Here" is pretty great (if you like this kind of stuff).

NECRO
Now I'll switch gears…pretty much as far as they can be switched. Necro is a rapper who coined the phrase "Death Rap" and is pretty much to rap music what Cannibal Corpse is to death metal – horror fantasy, that is to say he raps about viciously maiming, killing, raping, and destroying people with great vigor and horrendous detail.
I originally became aware of Necro several years ago when someone showed me his song, "I Need Drugs," which I found hilarious:



But I never followed up on looking into him because, although I liked the lyrics and his rhyming was quality, I wasn't a fan at all of the flow or the instrumentation of the track at all. I found out much later that the song was actually a parody of LL COOL J's "I Need Love," which makes the song even more hilarious. Here's the original:



I hadn't heard much about Necro until about maybe a year and a half ago when my younger brother started getting WAY into him. Recently though, he told me that he, and a lot of his hardcore fans are now hating on Necro because he's a "fat jew sellout poser," a statement that is hilariously stupid for 3 reasons:
1. Racists or not, were these imbeciles not aware of the fact that he was ALWAYS Jewish? I don't think it's ever been a hidden fact given the guy's birth name is RON BRAUNSTEIN (how much more Jewish can you get?).
2. He went from self-distributing his records out-of-pocket through his own record label to signing a distribution deal with INDEPENDENT distributor Koch Records. That is hardly selling out. He still makes all of his own decisions regarding every part of the record-making process – all this means if that there is more money backing the process of getting albums into more stores and creating more fans. Koch isn't giving him any more money than he already was getting, but they are helping him get the chance to get more and newer kids to come to shows to directly give him more money by buying merchandise
3. Poser? Did these morons all think before that he actually was killing people? Necro's lyrics, even taking away the acute Cannibal Corpse reference, are immensely similar to what drunk people do in "rap battles" in garages across the country – come up with the cleverest rhymes explaining how one will terminate, decimate, and mutilate one's opponent. That's all there is to it – no street cred, repping hoods, or any of that garbage. It's fantasy.

ANYWAY, I recently came across a video from Necro's latest album, "Death Rap," for the song "Mutilate The Beat," and I was really impressed:



I picked up "Death Rap" this weekend and the whole album delivers just as 'Mutilate' does. Each song has very inventive, sharply written lyrics with clever rhymes and wordplay. He has a very cool rhythmic style to how he spits out his words. Even if you don't pay attention to the actual words, there is a certain precision to their presentation that I don't hear from a lot of rappers that really appeals to me. The music is great too – fairly minimalist but up-tempo drum breaks with symphonic backing, and on a couple songs he enlists metal bands to provide the tunes, even using singers such as SHADOWS FALL's Brian Fair on the choruses. The songs are short and sweet, usually under three minutes. The lyrical content is definitely not for everybody. But if you look past the violence and take it as extremely humorous posturing, including many insanely funny, from-out-of-left-field pop culture reference like smashing someone's head open like "Gallagher's sledgehammer" ( If you don't know who I'm taking about click here ) , it's a really listenable, well-produced rap album.

ONELINEDRAWING
This one is related to my now obsessive dig into the history of POSTHARDCORE music (something I won't delve into now, but you'll be seeing a lot of mentions of it here, I'm sure, so here is some quick reading on it in the very bare bones Wikipedia entry on the subject: POSTHARDCORE WIKI PAGE
Onelinedrawing is the solo project of Joe Matranga, once lead singer of seminal posthardcore band Far (whose albums I've yet to get my hands on since they're out of print and not readily available). I once read that Matranga was the "not shitty" version of Chris Carrabba, the former lead singer for Christian emo band Further Seems Forever who went on to be known as Dashboard Confessional. Funny enough, later on, the singer from Far contemporaries SENSE FIELD (whom Onelinedrawing actually did a split e.p. with) actually became the singer for Futher Seems Forever.
I had been hearing about Onelinedrawing for years, and was expecially interested because they did a split record with RIVAL SCHOOLS, a band I loved (and unfortunately only did one full length album), but some reason never listened to. I never picked up that split and never ventured to try out Matranga's stuff.
So FINALLY this weekend I picked up both full length Onelinedrawing albums, "Visitor" and "The Volunteers," and am pleased to say that I like his stuff very much. For some reason I think had been expecting simply voice and acoustic guitar, which makes me weary sometimes, especially since I hadn't gotten a chance to hear Far yet so I didn't know his voice. It turns out that it's a bit more of a collaborative project, with several guests, different types of instrumentation, samples, and sound effects. It's a similar type of project of home recording and collaboration as BRAND NEWand REGGIE AND THE FULL EFFECT but decidedly rawer and more purposely lo-fi than both. Mattranga's voice is in a lot higher register than I expected, similar to contemporaries likeSUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE and MINERALThe songwriting style is also reminiscent of extremely significant band THE REPLACEMENTS

Here are a couple OneLineDrawing videos:

"SMILE"



"BETTER THAN THIS"



JAWBOX
Another posthardcore band that I stumbled upon while doing some research, but my notes didn't indicate to which band they had been connected, so I'm not sure how I came across them. I picked up "NOVELTY" this weekend, and like my recent discovery of LIFETIME . They are a band I really WISH I had discovered in the early '90s when they were still new, although Jawbox dodes much more fit my current sensibilities than Lifetime.
I don't have a whole lot to say about Jawbox other then they're really good. They spent a good deal of their career on MINOR THREAT, FUGAZI, and THE EVENS frentman Ian MacKaye's record label DISCHORD and built a decent sized catalogue before their breakup. Here's some videos and some history JAWBOX WIKI PAGE




No embedding for these two unfortunately

COOLING CARD

CUT-OFF

LAVENDER DIAMOND
Finally I'll talk a little bit about LAVENDER DIAMOND. I discovered this band a couple months ago while doing some research on OSKER's Devon Williams when I found he is now (or was) playing guitar for this band. Lavender Diamond is a delightful folk-ish type band (a similar type of folk rock to SUFJAN STEVENS or THE POLYPHONIC SPREE) with nice female voals and piano. I picked up the record "Imagine Our Love" and would love to recommend it to anyone and everyone who enjoys this type of thing. Be sure to check out "Here Comes One" on their MYSPACE PAGE and here is the video for "Open Your Heart," the single from the album:



OKAY, whew, that's enough. Hopefully there will be lots of these, if I can find the time and energy. I hope all of the links and stuff work.

-Andrew