On paper, Immunity is the album I've been waiting for all year. It's dark, brooding, mechanical, driving electronic music from a relatively unknown artist. Last year, I had Andy Stott's Luxury Problems, which ended up as my fourth favorite album of 2012.
In actuality, it's hard to call Immunity "the album I've been waiting for", but it is pretty damn close. I would not be surprised if it ended up in my top ten at the end of the year, as it is the kind of album that definitely has potential to grow on me hard.
There are at least two songs on here that are simply amazing, however. The first is "Open Eye Signal", which sounds as if Andy Stott and Demdike Stare got together with will.i.am to teach him how to not suck. It really reminds me of that song by will.i.am and Britney (bitch) that goes "bring the action".. Wub wub wub. Don't get the wrong idea though. Action is brought in "Open Eye Signal", albeit very different from will.i.am's take. It's nearly 8 minutes of driving bass, sputtering percussion, and slippery synths, with a mid song change-up that totally rocks.
The last song, "Immunity" is one of those last songs on an album where you are left with only one thing worthy of listening to next, which is track one. It is a gorgeous song reminiscent of Sigur Ros and a perfect end to the album.
If you like your electronic music less dancey and more "warehouse party where people glare at each other seductively", then this is the album for you!
I don't really have time to write much about this album, but it's great! And it's free, available on Chane's website, http://chanceraps.com/!
Chance's style is kinda weird at first. Kind of feels more like slam poetry on top of woozy beats at times. But he is a very positive rapper, and really fun too. Also, his album art is easily my favorite of the year so far.
My favorite line, and this comes towards the end of the album, so you know by then Chance is not the violent type: "But if you touch my brother / All that anti-violence shit goes out the window along with you / And the rest of your team"
Pitchfork kind of gets a bad rap, but they still introduce me to albums I probably would have never heard otherwise. Baths' new Obsidian is one such album.
Baths sounds to me like Wild Beasts' Smother mixed with Washed Out's Within and Without. It's electropop that is laden with images of death, suicide, and self-deprecation. So basically, Obsidian is an album that may well have been made after asking a focus group full of Kyles what they wanted to hear.
I do like this album a lot, but I always find myself getting kind of tired of it towards the end. Maybe it's because I want the guy to lighten up a little, but mostly I think it's because the sad-synth thing sounds a little samey after a while.
So, it probably won't make my end of the year list, but I'll definitely be turning to it when I'm feeling especially emo.
Check out my favorite track below. And maybe don't listen at work?
When you think about Vampire Weekend, what adjectives come to mind?
Musty? Sparse? Swampy?
If not, then you obviously haven't heard their newest album yet.
To me, Vampire Weekend has always been that fun indie band that cute girls also like to listen to; I've never given them the credit they deserve. Even after Contra, which I was not anticipating at all, and came as a real surprise that this band was not a one-album-wonder.
A couple weeks ago I heard Vampire Weekend had a third album coming out, and I just shrugged it off, consumed by the Daft Hype of the past month. Once it was released, it didn't show up on Google Play, so I figured "eh, no loss".
However, I kept reading online how great this album is. The fans of this album seemed in awe, with superlatives stating that this album should win a grammy, and they seemed almost a little annoyed that Daft Hype had kind of covered this album up.
So, Google-be-damned, I pirated this album as I could wait no longer.
And guys, this album is really really fucking good. On first listen, I was immediately struck with the catchy-as-hell melodies. The melodies are familiar enough to sing along to, but still inventive enough to sound fresh. The song writing is really the core of what makes this album so damn good. But on top of that, Vampire Weekend uses some really interesting recording techniques that give this album a certain flavor.
The album sounds like the band is playing for an art show in a large, mostly empty warehouse, and the guests are neither interested in the art or the music. There are moments where there are actually sounds of a crowd talking over the band playing. The microphone sounds like it is in the middle of the room between the band and the crowd, so neither are picked up like they are the foreground of what we should be hearing.
I am sure I could try to go in-depth on how this lends towards Vampire Weekend's desire to return to a time when they were 4 dudes making great music that no one really wanted to hear. And I did read a Rolling Stone article that hinted towards Vampire Weekend's own surprise toward their popularity, but that kind of shit makes for boring articles (take note, Rolling Stone. Kyle's blog is the wave of the future).
Instead I will just talk about the snare drum. In "Step", we have muted harmonizing open the song (white noise in the background) and then the snare cracks in at full volume like an exclamation point, followed by a quaint harpsichord line. This contrast in volumes and energy really makes this song stand out for me. The whole thing has this motion to it that you can not help but sway to. And in "Hannah Hunt", easily the moment in the record where you realize you are listening to a masterfully written record, you have the almost restrained singing from Ezra, followed by a leading piano riff, and BAM--snare drum! Ezra comes back, screaming desperately the same lines he's been singing the whole song, but this time there are tears streaming down my face.
It's really hard to describe why this pop album is better than others. It's like The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, or Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues: what is it about the melodies on these albums that make them "good" pop songs? Is it all just a matter of opinion, or is there some mathematics at play here that makes certain combinations of melodies just a nose above the others?
I hope you didn't want an answer to that, because I sure don't know. I can tell you to listen to Modern Vampires of the City, though. Perhaps we can better understand what makes a perfect pop record by listening to one.
I think my feelings for this album are best described by my real-time reactions to track 1, "Give Life Back to Music". Follow along won't you?
0:00 - What the fuck is this corny ass guitar intro? This is awful.
0:19 - Oh shit, this is an awesome groove. I immediately forgive whatever hell that was at the beginning.
0:50 - VOCODER! I love this so hard! And the melody is pretty good too!
1:23 - Shit is ON! This guitar is fawnkay!
1:55 - Oh. The guitar interlude thing is back. Why. I was jamming.
2:11 - And we're back! Give life back to music! Yeah!
3:00 - Gah. This corny interlude is so out of place and so... bad.
3:16 - Oh yeah! Sounds of people partying. I'm partying. Are you partying? Let's party. I just hope that interlude doesn't come back...
4:15 - Fade out, because this groove will go on forever...
[fin]
Did you pick up on the theme? It was pretty subtle.
This theme of "aw yeah" right alongside of "please stahp" continues consistently throughout the whole album. And it's not like on most albums, where you have songs you want to skip. It's all jumbled up into each song so you have to sit through the bad stuff to get to the good. Thankfully there are some songs ("Instant Crush") that are 100% bad and you can skip those, but conversely there are no 100% great songs that you want to skip to. The strings on "Giorgio by Moroder" are cinematic, the vocoder on "Lose Yourself to Dance" is awesome, the piano and guitar interplay on "Fragments of Time" is really smooth, but each of these songs are ruined by another element. The exhaustingly repetitive synth line on "Giorgio by Moroder", the funeral march pace and lifeless vocals on "Lose Yourself to Dance", and the guy-next-door vocals from Todd Edwards on "Fragments of Time".
Really, all of the guest vocals are pretty bad on this album. When either Guy or Thomas sing through the vocoder, it ironically adds an emotional element that is missing from everyone else's vocal takes.
There are probably two songs I will return to after this week: "Give Life Back to Music" and "Doin' it Right". "Doin' it Right" has my favorite vocal contribution, and the one I was looking forward to the least. Panda Bear just doesn't seem like a good fit within Daft Punk's aesthetic, but this song really surprised me. I will say that the song really feels like the longest intro ever and at the end I am like "NOW LET THE BEAT DROP!" but the song is just over.
Which kind of brings me to my next takeaway: Daft Punk's next tour is going to be AMAZING. Each one of these songs sounds unfinished, almost as if they designed these songs to be sampled again by themselves on their next tour. These songs will really come alive with a 4-on-the-floor dance beat. Just think, Human After All supplied the foundation for some of the best moments on Alive 2007, but was really nothing spectacular on its own...
So, I probably won't be returning to Random Access Memories very often. But you can bet I'll be the first one buying tickets for their next tour.
I jumped on board the music-streaming train earlier this year. I found that I was spending $7 to buy a new album, listen to it for maybe a week, then spend $7 more the next week on a new album, never to listen to last week's album again.
So, I signed up for Rdio. $9 a month for unlimited streaming of almost anything I wanted to listen to. The operative word being "almost". Only official releases would be on Rdio, so that meant no free hip-hop mixtapes. There were also a few albums with legal issues that prevented them from showing up (Taylor Swift's Red just showed up yesterday. It's not bad, by the way). For these albums, I'd have to switch back to Google Play Music. It was pretty annoying.
But today I found out that Google Play Music has released "All Access". It's just like Rdio, but my library of files I had already uploaded to the service are side by side with Google's massive library of music. No more switching between services! So far, it's had everything I've searched for (more than Rdio), but in the case of free mixtapes, I can just download the mixtape, upload it to Google, and keep listening.
And it's only $7 a month!
I know what you are thinking: "Kyle, your blog is so popular that Google is paying you to write about their new service. What a sell-out."
First: They aren't. I've just been waiting for a service like this for a long time
Second: Hell yeah I'll sell out. Google, I will gladly accept anything you throw my way. Cash? Free year of Google Music All Access? A Google shirt?
Bibio released one of my favorite albums of 2009 in Ambivalence Avenue. That album was full of so many surprises, it was one of the most enjoyable first listens I've had with an album. Each song felt like it had been recorded in a different decade by a different artist. One minute, it's 60s pop-rock, the next it's 70s funk, then some Dilla-esque beats for good measure. That album is the best mixtape that is actually not a mixtape at all.
With Silver Wilkinson, Bibio has taken all of his disjointed styles and melded them together to create a sound that is unique to his own. On the surface, an album with a singular sound should sound better than one that is all over the place stylistically from one song to the next. However, I think one of the reasons I liked Ambivalence Avenue so much was because of how fun the genre-jumping was.
That's not to say this is a bad album, it's pretty good! There are a few filler tracks that kind of meander about, but on the whole, it's a solid album.
It's biggest problem is the greatest song on here, "À tout à l'heure". This song is so damn good, it really makes the rest of the album sound kind of boring. I've started this album from the beginning, and I've started it from random tracks, but no matter where I start, I am just waiting for this track to come on, and when it's over I listen to the rest of the album on a loop anticipating the return of this song.
This song is easily the best pop-rock song I've heard this year, and I really think it's gonna be tough to beat. When I heard this song earlier last month, my expectations for this album skyrocketed. But this song is just too good for the album's use.
I encourage you to listen to this album, if only for Bibio's unique style. But if you only listen to one song from this album--hell, if you only listen to one song for the year so far, do yourself a favor and listen to "À tout à l'heure".
