music musings

I’m honestly not a huge lover of electronic/digital/techno/whatever other name you give it music. I find the majority of it to be noisy and repetitive, and frankly if it wasn’t played on real instruments then I have a whole lot less respect for it as music, though I do find it amazing that you can do that kind of stuff with your laptop (or what have you).

The bottom line is, it takes a lot more to get me interested in music like that, much less hooked on it.
 

However, I’m a sucker for ethereal, floaty, dreamy shit— like Machinedrum’s album Rooms. It’s exactly the kind of — let’s call it nontraditional, because I’m not into all that nitpicky genre bullshit and I’m willing to bet you someone is going to pitch a bitch fit if I call it “electronica”, which is what I call anything made primarily with a computer/digital effects of some kind— that’s going to get me every time. While it, too, is repetitive in some instances, the music on this album perfectly captures the diaphanous sensation I love, with ghostly vocal effects and eerie melodies calculated almost to bring a listener to the brink of tears.

Gorgeous, gorgeous music. I discovered it on a fellow Tumblr user’s blog and wound up acquiring the album. I have yet to regret it.

it needs to be said that dave barnes has a fucking amazing voice. i’m three years late in listening to the rest of this album, but What We Want, What We Get is as awesome as the first song i ever heard of it so far.

a day or two ago it occurred to me that i have this stack of blank CDs in the closet, and i was feeling pissed off and didn’t know what else i could do to distract myself. the book i was reading wasn’t doing it.

so i just started putting together playlists and burning them to CDs. i made one each for my boyfriend and my best friend, and today i made two more. and you know what? it feels good in some way. i’m discovering i actually enjoy just putting this shit together.

i have a tendency to completely ignore the radio. i have done so for the last…i think about seven years or so now because the quality of music i’ve found on it has decreased so drastically in the last decade that i couldn’t bear to endure it any longer.

consequently, though, i miss a lot of great artists hiding in between frequencies— and worse yet, by the time i find them they’ve faded into obscurity, smothered by still more shit. the world’s ears are gummed up with rainbows and sexual secretions.

i say all this to point to an artist i discovered completely by accident while hunting for LPs in Fry’s, by the name of Kimbra. i couldn’t even tell the sex of the person on the album cover, but i liked the art. so when i got home, i torrented the album.

imagine my surprise when, instead of an indie band, i found that i’d acquired a solo artist with a voice like burning ice and honey— one of those sultry white girls with a blues to convey, and the voice to convey it. i’ve only listened to one song (i’m typing this as i listen) and already i know i want this album.

if the idea of sia and joss stone having a love child appeals to you— or you’re into female solo artists who can swing the blues— you should pick up Vows, people. i don’t think you’d regret it.

on to the next song.

(incidentally, just how far behind am i in discovering her?)

that tool sound twice as good on vinyl.

that is all.

…how it is that in a song that would make me roll my eyes if i gave much of a damn about uberfeminism is instead extremely sexy to me— and made so mostly because usher says “fucking” in it.

you are a cruel race of people.

every time i listen to golddigger i think about how sensual that one part of it is, when kanye says “while y’all washing, watch him.” the way he whispers that— and then i think he even goes close to the girl’s ear in the video. there’s just something so sensual in that. it’s not even a sexual line but it sure does give me some thoughts. and i don’t even like kanye like that, man.

you ever notice how many musicians there are with songs about how they don’t need the fame or the money or any of that, how all they need is their dog and a cup of a tea or some humble shit like that—

except you already have the cars and the fame plus the dog and probably 500 varieties of tea, and you sure don’t look to be giving that up anytime soon so what the fuck are you on about?

I’m just saying.

well our love was often a verb and spontaneity has brought a third
but do to our youth an economic state we wish to terminate
about this we don’t feel great , but baby that’s how it is
but the feds have dissed me
they ignore and dismiss
and the pro-lifers harrass me outside the clinic
and call me a murderer, now that’s hate
so needless to say we’re in a mental state of debate”
hey beautiful bird i said digging her somber mood
the fascists are some heavy dudes
they don’t really give a damn about life
they just don’t want a woman to
control her body or have the right to choose
but baby that ain’t nothin
they just want a male finger on the button
because if you say war they will send them to die by the score
aborting mission should be your volition
but if souter and thomas have their way
you’ll be standing in line unable to get welfare while they’re out
hunting and fishing
it has always been around it will always have a niche
but they’ll make it a privelege not a right
accessible only to the rich
pro-lifers should dig themselves
cause life doesn’t stop after birth
and to a child borne to the unprepared
it might even just get worse

—  digable planets, “la femme fatale”

i’m recovering a lot of my music, thank goodness. i reacquired AFI, Linkin Park, and Editors among others today (at the moment my beloved train is restoring my Metallica) and i’m listening to Death of Seasons on my Zune and thinking: i really loved AFI when i was younger, but damn. they really are one of the most ridiculously melodramatic set of lyricists. so much of their lyrical content is so emo as to be a joke. it’s funny, because i still love the songs. but i can’t bear to think too hard about the words i’m hearing.

i mean, don’t get me wrong. they still can turn a phrase or three well enough, but come on. “i held a falling star and it wept for me, dying”? what the fuck? and it’s twice as ridiculous when you think about the fact that a grown man wrote this. what in the world. i just. i do not know what emo musicians are thinking when they write these things, man. and worse yet, i do not know what it is that makes people like thirteen-year-old me think that these are actually good lyrics.

i do still love that cello at the end of the song though. and at least tool still haven’t turned out to actually have sucked all this time, or john mayer…

Quick poll: How do you most strongly prefer to hear music?

A. Live

B. Via headphones

C. In a car/on a stereo/other external audio medium

D. On your computer (which I guess falls under C but whatever

A,B, C or D?

• Dave Matthews Band: Funny the Way It Is
• Dave Matthews Band: Seven
• Dave Matthews Band: Alligator Pie
• Digable Planets: Jettin’
• Crazy Loop: Crazy Loop (MM-MA-MA)
• The Music: Victim
• Crazy Loop: Chica Bomb
• The Music: Symbol of Hope
• TV on the Radio: Let the Devil In
• TV on the Radio: I Was a Lover