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Post by wortcov on Aug 5, 2013 22:18:07 GMT
I only had minor exposure to theses guys through spivsy, but I really like what I have heard so far. and if I gave suggestion then you all would know how bad the few bands I like a entire album of is.  |
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Post by i love my dead gay forum on Aug 5, 2013 22:51:02 GMT
hey it's that band, i got an album by them last week. pretty good stuff.
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Post by Chiropto on Aug 11, 2013 7:43:37 GMT
Do a review of Not Available by The Residents.
Listen to it more than once, though. I hated it the first time, and now I think it's one of their bests.
Also, probably important background: They had originally recorded with intention of never releasing it. They believed that if art is created with the intention of being shared, then that will influence the end product, even if it is just subconsciously.
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 11, 2013 17:32:31 GMT
Do a review of Not Available by The Residents. Listen to it more than once, though. I hated it the first time, and now I think it's one of their bests. Also, probably important background: They had originally recorded with intention of never releasing it. They believed that if art is created with the intention of being shared, then that will influence the end product, even if it is just subconsciously. Alright, that'll be next week. Today's will be up later tonight because mmmm busy |
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Post by wortcov on Aug 11, 2013 23:07:20 GMT
mmm, you should do arzachel by arzachel/uriel after that.
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 12, 2013 0:37:46 GMT
mmm, you should do arzachel by arzachel/uriel after that. Okey dokey. Album for the week of 8/11 is...  Dandelion Gum - Black Moth Super Rainbow, 2007
Anyone who has talked to me for a lengthy amount of time knows that I love this band. I love pretty much everything about them, from their sound to their general aesthetic. The reason I've waited until now to do one of their releases is because I haven't actually listened to them much lately, and I was worried I wouldn't have much to talk about in terms of their actual albums. However, last week I listened to Dandelion Gum again and realized that there's a lot I could write about it. So that's what I'm going to do. Dandelion Gum was recorded between 2004 and 2006 and released on May 22nd of 2007. In the BMSR chronology, it's their third album, as long as you don't include their stuff under the name Satanstompingcaterpillars. Honestly, I have only a vague idea as to who's in the band during this album and what they play, but all you need to know is that the mastermind behind the group is Thomas Fec, aka Tobacco. He provides the majority of direction on BMSR's albums and makes a lot of the music himself as far as I know. This album has a certain uniformity about it, and I'm pretty sure a lot of that comes from Fec's direction.
Speaking of uniform, every song on this album has a vocoder filter over Fec's voice. All of them. Some people might say this is a novelty. I think it adds a dimension to the music that wouldn't be present without it. In fact, every BMSR album except for their first, Falling Through A Field, has some distinct manner of vocoder. The voice in their second album, Start A People, sounded like as Chiropto once (I think) aptly put it, "a Tickle-Me-Elmo on acid". Their fourth album, Eating Us, had a voice that was slimy and androgynous. Cobra Juicy, their fifth, had a satanic junkyard rasp that seemed to leak in from Fec's solo album, Maniac Meat. This is important to bring up because these voices provide every album with a distinct sound, and Dandelion Gum's finds a happy medium between all of these. That isn't to say the voice is remotely normal, however. It's not some singing robot. The voice sounds like a man who was a captured by some unknown cult, taken to a brightly colored house deep in the woods, subjected to unexplainable torments that twisted his body, and is just now seeing the sun for the first time in many years. The best example of this is probably the track Sun Lips. The lyrics include lines like "We wait in the summertime, we miss you in the summertime" sung in a rainbow-drenched rasp. It's somewhat sinister, and it provides hints of shadows to this otherwise bright album.
Anyway, on to the music and tracks themselves. While this album could be considered "electronic", there are a lot of acoustic elements, and all of the electronic bits are played on analogue, which gives the songs a very warm sound. There are also drums (which may or may not be produced on a drum machine in certain songs), acoustic guitars, and even maracas. The sound on this album is where BMSR really came through with an accomplished and cohesive style. As I mentioned before, the prevailing atmosphere on this album is fairly bright, but that doesn't mean it's always clean. Lost, Picking Flowers In The Woods is a rough track that gradually increases in intensity until it collapses under feedback and drums before giving a brief respite that is quicky shattered by the opening of the next track, Caterpillar House. A lot of the tracks on this album complement each other in this way, like Sun Lips and Rollerdisco, and the 1-2 punch of Lollipopsichord and They Live In the Meadow. In this sense, Dandelion Gum is an album that's made to be listened to as an album. It all flows extremely well, and there's a definite feeling of cohesion that their most recent album Cobra Juicy lacked.
The second half of the album (from The Afternoon Turns Pink onward) does lag a bit in places, especially compared to the first half and the intro provided by Forever Heavy and Jump Into My Mouth And Breathe The Stardust (which has always been one of my favorite songs by them). When The Sun Grows On Your Tongue and Drippy Eye are fairly mediocre compared to some of the other tracks. Lost, Picking Flowers is a good track but somewhat inconsistent with the rest of the album. However, the last two tracks, Wall Of Gum and Untitled Roadside Demo are short and sweet and provide a fairly enjoyable, if somewhat abrupt, end to this album. There is, however, a hidden track at the end after a few minutes of silence, a feature in every BMSR album except Cobra Juicy. The hidden track begins with an acoustic guitar and moves into drums and sweeping synthesizers and from there honestly doesn't go anywhere. It's good for a hidden track but like Lost, Picking Flowers, it's a little different from the rest of the album. In 2011, the album was reissued with 14 "extra flavor" tracks, which were culled from various EPs and scrapped ideas from Dandelion Gum and Eating Us. I mention this because if you like Dandelion Gum, Extra Flavor is essential listening. It's got a lot of the same kind of sounds and makes a pretty solid album in itself. So yeah. Dandelion Gum. A good album from one of my favorite bands.
Dandelion Gum original track listing:
1. Forever Heavy
2. Jump Into My Mouth And Breathe The Stardust
3. Melt Me
4. Lollipopsichord
5. They Live In The Meadow
6. Sun Lips
7. Rollerdisco
8. Neon Syrup For The Cemetery Sisters
9. The Afternoon Turns Pink
10. When The Sun Grows On Your Tongue
11. Spinning Cotton Candy In A Shack Made Of Shingles (I just realized that my iTunes is missing this track so I forgot to mention it but it's a pretty good song)
12. Drippy Eye
13. Lost, Picking Flowers In The Woods
14. Caterpillar House
15. Wall of Gum
16. Untitled Roadside Demo
17. (Hidden Track)
This whole album isn't on YouTube but a lot of the tracks are so you can listen to them there or just download it somewhere because it's not too hard to find a download of.
Here's the actual, official video for Sun Lips:
NEXT WEEK: Not Available, by The Residents, as requested by Chiropto!
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Post by Chiropto on Aug 12, 2013 1:06:54 GMT
Dandelion Gum was the first BMSR album I listened to. Extra Flavor is probably my favorite, if it counts as a true album.
Sorta. I said "The bastard love-child of Elmo and GLaDOS."
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 12, 2013 1:43:15 GMT
Dandelion Gum was the first BMSR album I listened to. Extra Flavor is probably my favorite, if it counts as a true album. Sorta. I said "The bastard love-child of Elmo and GLaDOS." I knew it had something to do with Elmo |
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 19, 2013 3:56:42 GMT
Album of the week for 8/18 is...
...Not Available!
Ha see what I did there (I fucking hate myself) aren't I clever (this body is a prison) ha ha ha (cast this weak flesh aside)
Album coming tomorrow because I am a big fcuk
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 19, 2013 22:47:29 GMT
Alright, album of the week 8/18 blah blah etc...  Not Available - The Residents, 1978
If there's any band who's deserving of the title "Weirdest Of The Weird", it's probably and extremely appropriately The Residents. They have a long and complicated history as a band and I feel like at least some of it is important context for this album, so I'm gonna talk about that for a bit. The Residents originally met in Shreveport, Louisiana (a town that some of my dad's family is from, strangely enough) at some point during their high school career in the 60's and then they left for San Franciso in 1966 but their car broke down in San Mateo, California, so they just decided to stay there apparently. After a series of events, they finally made it to San Francisco in 1972 and formed Ralph Records and honestly I don't know where I'm going with this shit because their history is as dense and baffling as their discography. The point is, they fucked around with music demos for a while and then finally got around to releasing some albums starting in 1974. These albums were Meet The Residents, The Third Reich 'n Roll, Fingerprince, and Duck Stab/Buster Glen. Shit. Okay, there's more.
The follow-up to Duck Stab/Buster Glen was supposed to be Eskimo. However, there were a metric shit-ton of delays, and The Resident's producer/management, the Cryptic Corporation (which may or not may have been created by the band), demanded they release something. So, Not Available was released. According to The Residents, it was recorded in '74 and then locked away according to the "Theory Of Obscurity". This theory states that a work must be created without bringing any outside expectations into the creation process, and the work can only be released once its creators have forgotten it's existence. The 1987 CD reissue of the album contradicts it, with the liner notes stating the album was "an exercise in group therapy" and the band felt it was "too personally revealing". Whatever the reason, it was supposedly never meant to be released. But it was. Fuck.
Okay. Moving on. Before this album, the releases I had heard by The Residents were Freak Show (which I loved), Commercial Album (which I did not by any means love), and Duck Stab/Buster Glen (which I did not exactly love but thoroughly enjoyed). Not Available is a lot less experimental and abrasive than DS/BG, but it's just as bizarre. Much like Freak Show, NA is a concept album. Supposedly. Despite multiple listens, I have almost no fucking clue what the concept is meant to be or if it actually exists. This is what I know: there's a girl named Edweena, a porcupine (who possibly represents the concept of knowledge), Uncle Remus, Catbird, and the Enigmatic Foe. The porcupine is probably in love with Edweena. Catbird (who sounds like a deranged version of 21 from Venture Bros.) and the Enigmatic Foe are at odds with each other. There's probably more to it but I feel like it would take a few weeks of analysis and a few college degrees to really figure out what it is. It's definitely apparent something is going on across the album's five tracks, or maybe The Residents just want to make it seem that way. If that's the case, they do a damn good job.
Oh shit I'm on paragraph four already uh the musical style in this album is a somewhat of a departure from the bands previous albums. The sounds lean away from the noise of the bands earlier releases into something more cohesive and fleshed-out. The album opens with something that sounds like a Arabian carnival midway from hell. "The Making Of A Soul" sounds like The Residents' interpretation of a witchcraft ritual. Also, there are no shortage of instruments on this thing. A primary feature of the album are little interludes of piano melody which are a far cry from tracks like the screeching (but no less enjoyable) sound of "Constantinople". NA also has a lot of sprawling brass wind instruments that call to mind selections from the Naked Lunch soundtrack. There's also an accordion, and who doesn't love some accordion now and then? A lot of the album feels like The Residents are taking a stab, either serious or satirical, at the progressive rock concept album genre. Whatever their intention was with NA, it led to the formation of a truly enjoyable piece of music. Despite the somewhat opaqueness of it's "concept", this album is worth listening to both as a decent intial introduction to the band and an accomplished piece of their discography. My writing about this album may have gotten bogged down by all the back-story, but maybe I'll do another one of their albums sometime, even though what I wrote about them on here barely scratches the surface.
Not Available, original track listing (I forgot to mention that the 1987 reissue had bonus tracks):
1. Part One: Edweena
2. Part Two: The Making Of A Soul
3. Part Three: Ship's a'Going Down
4: Part Four: Never Known Questions
5. Epilogue
All five songs are on YouTube, but not collected in one video. Here's the first track, Edweena:
NEXT WEEK: Arzachel by Uriel/Arzachel, as requested by Wortcov!
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Post by Chiropto on Aug 20, 2013 1:19:43 GMT
I actually asked Randy about the story of Not Available, and this is what he had to say:  shoulda seen it coming Someone thinks its about a love triangle, which is probably just as valid as any other interpretation: residents.com/historical4/classic/page2/page2.php |
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 20, 2013 2:24:37 GMT
Someone on Pirate Bay offered this explanation:
"If I've got everything right, the Porcupine and Catbird have both fallen in love with Edweena. The Enigmatic Foe (later, the Noble Foe) helps Catbird against his rival. In the end, it turns out Uncle Remus have eloped with Edweena. The three then forgive Uncle Remus."
That is translated from Swedish though so uh
Edit: That's exactly what it says in the liner notes of the thing you just linked whoops
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 25, 2013 16:25:58 GMT
Album may be coming today or I may have to do it tomorrow; I just moved into my dorm and I'm still getting shit unpacked
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Post by KDarkness on Aug 26, 2013 1:25:30 GMT
SURPRISE IT'S TODAY Album for the week of 8/25 is... 
Arzachel - Arzachel/Uriel, 1969
So when Wortcov requested this I honestly had no idea what I was getting into. This is the first album I've done for this by a band that I wasn't at least semi-familiar with in some way. I had never heard of the band at all, and the name sounds like something that could belong in at least fifty different genres. In addition, this is the only album released by the band, which was a side project of some members from a band called Egg and another guy. Also, the band changed their name from Uriel to Arzachel for the recording of this album. The information on this album is pretty sparse. Basically, I went into this expecting the worst, and came out of it pleasantly surprised. This is honestly a pretty good album and one my favorites I've heard in a while.
The band on this album consists of four people: Steve Hillage on guitar and vocals, Dave Stewart on organ, Clive Brooks on drums, and Mont Campbell on bass and vocals too. All of them except Hillage were in the aforementioned band Egg. Arzachel was a side project because the material was deemed as not being stylistically appropriate for Egg's catalogue or something. Whatever. Arzachel consists of only six tracks. The first four, which compose side A, are shorter and relatively more "tame" tracks. The last two compose side B and are lengthy, chaotic, psychedlic tracks. The album falls neatly into the psych/prog-rock genre, and at times sounds vaguely like Barrett-era Pink Floyd. All the tracks are original material except for one, which I'll be getting to a bit later in here.
The opening track, "Garden of Earthly Delights", is a pretty good preparation for the album to come. An organ jam accompanied by drums and guitar leads into an occasionally foreboding jam-filled song about comparing women to flowers and shit in lyrics based on a 17th century lute song. By the second track, "Azathoth", it becomes apparent that the organ isn't going anywhere. And yes, this song is indeed about the Azathoth of H.P. "Hot Pants" Lovecraft's mythos. The song starts with a nice contrast of light music with dark lyrics about a "mindless demon ruling in absolute chaos". As perhaps expected, the song descends into chaos with screeching organs and wailing voices before offering a brief respite that is cut short by the track ending. I could talk about all the other tracks but for time and space reasons I'm only gonna talk about two more: the third (Queen St. Gang) and the sixth (Metempsychosis).
"Queen St. Gang" is a cover based on Keith Mansfield's song Funky Fanfare, which some of you may know from the Grindhouse double-feature film (> listen here <). While the original is filled with horns, honky-tonk piano and a bass line that is very funky indeed, Arzachel's version is completely different. Their version eschews the previous instruments for a much softer bass line, a very noticable drum snare, and a jam on that organ that's been hanging around for the whole album. "Queen St. Gang" sounds like a track you'd hear in a particularly chilled nightclub or as an arrangement for elevator music. That's not to say it's boring; it's just relaxed. Their version of this song proves a band can cover a track while keeping it somewhat recognizable but still making it their own. Now, while "Queen St. Gang" is relaxed, "Metempsychosis" is a different beast entirely. It's a track that begins with noises out of sonic hell and just goes from that. At ~17 minutes, it's by far the longest track on the album but perhaps also the most rewarding. It's a cacophony of instruments that at times manages to form itself into a psychedelic jam session. There are moments that call to mind Wendy Carlos' score for A Clockwork Orange. It's an appropriate end to the album, with the track eventually coming to a head and going out with a bang of shredding and feedback. The whole album is just under 45 minutes. So, it's good and it's a short. Give it a listen if you like prog-rock, and especially give it a listen if you've never gotten into the genre before.
Arzachel original track listing:
1. Garden of Earthly Delights
2. Azathoth
3. Queen St. Gang
4. Leg
5. Clean Innocent Fun
6. Metempsychosis
Listen on YouTube (It's kind of shit quality):
NEXT WEEK: An album I picked.
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Post by Chiropto on Aug 26, 2013 1:46:27 GMT
Future suggestion: Cardiac, by Nebulo
I can't get anyone else to listen to Nebulo, so I'm curious to hear what you'd say.
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