Music

[Chun the Unavoidable]

I tend toward the later Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds stuff - is Grinderman any good? As to The Velvet Underground, I want at least one of theirs but am wary of purchasing since I learned that some of it is unlistenable - what do you recommend?

[Insomniac]

I love all of Nick Cave's music, but Your Funeral, My Trial, Tender Prey and Murder Ballads have been getting repeated listens over the last couple weeks. I just bought this live Bad Seeds record and it sounds amazing. A good mix of the earlier stuff and new.



When it comes to Grinderman, I personally love it. It has a much more raw and rough sound than the Bad Seeds with a lot of noise and psychedelia. Dirty rock and roll with the punch of a good punk band like The Stooges. Their self-titled album is my favorite.

Velvet Underground is tricky though. I will freely admit that I'm not a fan of Nico's vocals- that said, The Velvet Underground & Nico album is probably my second favorite. "Heroin", "Venus In Furs" and "I'm Waiting For The Man" are serious jams. White Light/White Heat pretty much created the blue print for noise rock. The tracks are a lot longer with heavy doses of feedback and distortion. It's grimy and at times sounds as if recorded in a wet paper bag. The self-titled album is good but the first without Cale, who was integral to making those early records so special - in my opinion of course. "Pale Blue Eyes" is my favorite track on it.

The other two albums I barely listen to. Loaded has a couple of their most popular tracks "Sweet Jane" and "Rock N Roll" and Squeeze has a different vocalist instead of Lou Reed. They aren't bad, just that I don't quite dig them.

So I guess if you like raw and noisy rock and roll, White Light/White Heat while intense is a good starting place. The album with Nico is more polished and more psychedelic. The first three are pretty solid listens quite honestly. It sounds silly but they are all uploaded onto Youtube. If you have a free block of time, pop one on and give it a listen.

One of my favorite quotes is "not a lot of people bought their records (vu), but everyone who did went out and started bands."

I need to stop being so verbose haha.

One of the things I love most is collecting vinyl. Cliched but I think it sounds better and it's fun to spin records and mellow out. This is my humble set up.

The picture is massive but - http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a43/ec ... dqdwgh.jpg

[sam vimes]

Thanks to youtube a few tracks from sabatons new album popped up in my recommended vids (I did laugh at the irony of pirated tracks appearing in my recommendations despits all the content id stuff) gonna have to buy this album methinks night witches and resist and bite were suitably stonking great

[sam vimes]

Electric six what a band they just want to have fun and mess around
Gay Bar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XNFokmDKrE

[Mossy Toes]

"Come September," off of Anias Mitchell's "new" album Xoa (one of the few new songs on it, really, the rest being her redoing old songs of hers, or covering songs of hers that originally had other artists singing them, a la Hadestown) has really been rocking my world, this past few weeks. Unfortunate that the only versions I can find of it online to share are poor quality live filmed duet versions of it.

[Major Rawne]

Current listen is the Interstellar soundtrack. I just love it. Probably the best i've listened to since Oblivion or Man of steel.

[Insomniac]

I was stoked to contribute a years end list for my friend.

Http://halifaxcollect.blogspot.com

Check out the other lists too, a ton of solid picks if you dig more extreme music.

[Xisor]

After a few weeks of only soundtracks and some indie & electronic, I've been listening to lots of Tchaikovsky this morning. So far, so good.

It's been a long time since I sat down to listen to just some proper classical music. I like a lot of it, but I suspect I'm still a terrible amateur or outright philistine, mainly as the extent of my musical ability and insight is to give a bit of a jolly whistle.

[Mossy Toes]

Can't understand a word of French, but Racine carrée by Stromae certainly is an energetic album. Good music video on "Tous les mêmes," too...

[Chun the Unavoidable]

A Seasick Steve Best Of (Walking Man, I think it's called). Y'all.

[Midgard]

So my band Midgard has a new song up on YouTube as a preview for the full-length album coming out at the end of July. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jT1Q0HCeoc

[Vivia]

Following my post in Film Nest.

Olivia Newton-John and ELO.
Xanadu OST Expanded

The Electric Light Orchestra. I prefer them over Pink Floyd, they're cheerful. Sadly, I have neglected them for a long time because I couldn't remember the band's name.
ELO Megamix

[Vivia]

I'm recovering from a nasty cold, not all bad because I got to listen to a lot of music, this after I was feeling frustrated with my iPhone music.
First, I was thinking of trying Madonna's Rebel Heart. Wow, what a mediocre album, so blah. Even when I don't like her music I never felt she did anything bad, but not this time. Seriously boring stuff, it can be a bad thing trying to sound too contemporary. So, when Madonna fails it's time to move on to another pop icon like Kylie Minogue, I'm obviously showing my age here. It's hilarious because I just read an article about Madonna becoming the queen of darkness while Kylie remained bright and cheery. I'm really digging her Kiss Me Once album. It's full of upbeat music that makes me happy and it's clearly influenced by Italian synth disco.

Along with that I found my old love Daft Punk with Random Access Memory, now this is some serious ****. I'm totally in love with Touch feat. Paul Williams, it's amazing. Some of their best since Veridis Quo, the ELO influence is strong there.
Then on to Italian electro pop, for some reason I had these songs in my YT playlist for a number of years and I never bought the songs. Bah.
Kano is the ****. Another Life is a masterpiece, I love the deep lyrics, they're some dark '80s stuff. Ikeya Seki is amazing, Kavinsky sampled it in Grand Canyon, but I'm sorry the French group doesn't do it justice. The '80s synthpop have an ice cold, synthetic cocaine line that I believe only Daft Punk captures and only on a distance, it's gloomy, but fun, like a robot that wants to dance and at the same wants to kill you, and it's all right because all you want is to dance. Ikeya Seki is so amazing I went into a trance of cool, I might have been feverish, but that's not important. With titles like It's a War in the form of synth disco you can't go wrong.
Scotch is another one. Born To Kill and Man in the Man, Born To Kill is freaking awesome, it's like a death song, then Man in the Man it's a soft beach song, they couldn't be more different.
Koto is another futuristic synthpop group, Jabdah is one of the more upbeats songs.

[Xisor]

Along with that I found my old love Daft Punk with Random Access Memory, now this is some serious ****. I'm totally in love with Touch feat. Paul Williams, it's amazing. Some of their best since Veridis Quo, the ELO influence is strong there.

Touch? I remember Touch.

I still vacillate on RAM. I mean, I love it to bits. But very often I'll fluctuate on which bits I like and which seem unimportant. Like Contact and... well, the whole second half of the album. And Giorgio.

My heart still belongs to 'Digital Love', I doubt that'll ever seriously change. (Though 'We Can Make The World Stop' does come close for maddening wonder, who knows if it will last the fourteen years that Discovery impressed on me?) I think RAM hit a perfect storm of a big upturn in my trajectories and the very very happy period in London.

Wouldn't it be nice to go back?

I need something... more.

[Mossy Toes]

Along with that I found my old love Daft Punk with Random Access Memory, now this is some serious ****. I'm totally in love with Touch feat. Paul Williams, it's amazing. Some of their best since Veridis Quo, the ELO influence is strong there.

Touch? I remember Touch.

I still vacillate on RAM. I mean, I love it to bits. But very often I'll fluctuate on which bits I like and which seem unimportant. Like Contact and... well, the whole second half of the album. And Giorgio.

My heart still belongs to 'Digital Love', I doubt that'll ever seriously change. (Though 'We Can Make The World Stop' does come close for maddening wonder, who knows if it will last the fourteen years that Discovery impressed on me?) I think RAM hit a perfect storm of a big upturn in my trajectories and the very very happy period in London.

Wouldn't it be nice to go back?

I need something... more.

Hah. Honestly I vacillate on "Touch" too--sometimes I appreciate the full opera of it's sweeping emotion, but then other times when I turn it on it feels florid and overwrought.

"Contact," on the other hand... I do quite enjoy. In it's deliberately abrasive, growing-pressure sort of way.

Been listening to the new Metric album, Pagans in Vegas, which is... decent. Also the new CHVRCHES album Open Every Eye, which I am enjoying quite a bit--quite a few earworms that are refusing to get out of my brain.

[Vivia]

I agree about Touch and RAM. Touch holds a bit of nostalgia for me because of Paul Williams. Williams starred in Brian de Palmas awesome, awesome Phantom of the Paradise. It's pure 1970s weirdness, like my kind of weirdness and he plays a Mephistopheles kind of character. When I heard his voice in the song it was instantly recognisable. The score of the film is very RAM, I haven't read any interviews with Daft Punk, but I'm fairly certain they watched PotP among many things, ELO most certainly, they had that specific space age synth opera sound that was big in the '70s. Anime then had a lot that sound so to me is very nostalgic, compared it today's very down to earth anime scores. I'm sure Daft Punk is in my age group.
But...RAM feels kind of empty compared to any ELO albums, it's beautifully produced, but it lacks that special something. ELO and Pink Floyd created a sound and Daft Punk is a copycat DJ. Same with the Italian disco synth producers they created a new sound from the much maligned disco music, Daft Punk is only their torch carrier. I do respect them for making old school funk and disco beats, they made disco respectable for me.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

Nine Inch Nails and Leonard Cohen. Sadly not together .

[Mossy Toes]

Nine Inch Nails and Leonard Cohen. Sadly not together .

Nearest you'll get is probably Cash's cover of "Hurt".

[Chun the Unavoidable]

Yup: that one's Up There, for certain.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

Saw Mumford and Sons at Manchester last night: blinding show (Lovers of the Light!), with all the passion I've come to expect from this band. I even enjoyed the new stuff ( )