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2011 Music
- Thread starter Not Scicky
- Start date
My favorites are Indigo, Black, and Green at the moment, but the whole collection is stellar.
EDIT: add White to my faves list too, it kicks ass.
Can't stop listening to Jamie XX - Far Nearer and Beat For. If you like The XX and his work with Gil Scott Heron you'll like these I think. Can't get enough of the steel drums now...
I'd like this song if it weren't for the vocal effects. the instrumental is sick, but the vocals are pitched really annoyingly.
New In Flames held up to my expectations because they weren't too high to begin with. Sounds Of A Playground Fading is a decent effort and a better try-out in the mainstream metal direction than the last release, which was a huge disappointment. Liberation was the only song from this year's record that stuck into my head during the first listen.
finally got mogwai - hardcore will never die, but you will. it's my first mogwai album and i must say i am impressed by it. the distorted vocals on one track were annoying but it was only one track so w/e.
also got stream of passion's darker days, shit's really good and is closer in sound to embrace the storm than the flame within which i am pleased with.
also got stream of passion's darker days, shit's really good and is closer in sound to embrace the storm than the flame within which i am pleased with.
i had low expectations for Yes's new album Fly From Here, because this is Yes releasing an album 40 years after their prime, but with Jon Anderson gone and not being in control of most of the creative process like in 1973 (looking at you, Tales From Topographic Oceans) an actually acceptable, good album was produced. Benoît David is a surprisingly good vocalist, Chris Squire remains my favorite bassist of all time, and Steve Howe's still got it, somehow.
It's a shame Van der Graaf Generator's effort from this year sucked. Hopefully Rush won't disappoint on the "prog bands i didn't even realize were still making music" front when Clockwork Angels is released.
It's a shame Van der Graaf Generator's effort from this year sucked. Hopefully Rush won't disappoint on the "prog bands i didn't even realize were still making music" front when Clockwork Angels is released.
it's like if the jesus and mary chain hadn't been inured to all the sorrows of the world and had let their music be tainted by the melancholy. still, other songs have a peppy garage feel that's maybe even a bit like golden triangle. MAYBE. the hardest part about listening to this album was trying not to imagine a goth on a surfboard (he had robert smith's hair and a pitch black surfboard with a skull and crossbones on it!!!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOAZQFoyq1c this year's road trip anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQ9AYH6tFQ dandy dronefest
everyone probably knows that i love the books more than anything on this earth, and have loved them since all round here was green fields. when i first gave this album a cursory listen i was reticent if only to let it percolate a bit longer so i could avoid admitting to myself that i didn't like it very much. this turned out to be an effective tactic. i eventually gave a proper listen and upon hearing free translator i was floored by the "an' i see" sample.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGjs8TCGvQI
this is no doubt the closest thing to a 'song' the books have ever put out. (to anyone who hasn't listened to this band before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC35WrKC_nY) anyway, its majesty was vitiated by lyrics that made me feel like i was listening to beck. after some research, though, i discovered something that made me grin from ear to ear.
This track came out of a simple concept that we discovered a few years ago. During the Lemon of Pink era, every so often we would get a review in a foreign language, like Japanese or Italian, and it seemed so exotic, of course, we would want to know what it said. In fact, sometimes we get reviews in English that look like a foreign language as well. We needed a translator so that’s when we discovered freetranslation.com. Of course there are a lot of machine translators out there and they’re always getting better, but sometimes better isn’t better… The mediocre translators often give the most poetic results, and we loved the foreign reviews because the translator made our record sound twice as interesting. Machines are dumb, but sometimes they do brilliant things because they can’t help themselves. They don’t talk themselves out of anything, and so they just go for it. No judgement whatsoever. Taking advantage of machines in these moments is a great way to overcome the self-consciousness problem that Drew brought up in London (see post of July 21).
I think part of what we’re trying to do with the Books is to break the back of language, to bend it until it snaps and then examine the pieces to see what of it’s essence remains. Poets and songwriters have been in business so long, trying to say things in just the perfect way that they’ve crowded out the front door to meaning which is all tightly locked up by cliches. Essentially we’re looking for the back way around. So it’s really heartening to find a site like freetranslation.com that so egolessly shreds language like it’s making a vat of sauerkraut out of your precious word cabbages.
For this track we took a very well known folk song (which we’ve been advised not to name) and using free translation software, we translated the text into, for example, German, then into Italian, then into French, then into Swedish and then back into English. The results were spectacular. All of the imagery became completely warped, sentence structure was geniusly scrambled, errant nouns would inexplicably enter into strange situations… it became a machine free association on the original lyrics to the point that the ‘cover’ became a new original. Who wrote the song became completely unclear at this point… it became some mass collaboration of linguists, programmers and songsmiths. Both Paul and I translated an retranslated these lyrics so many times that new characters began to emerge and we made a collection of the best moments in our texts. I then set them to the music the best I could, adding conjunctions and fixing the rhythm of the sentences where necessary to make a smooth vocal line.
The “And I see” chorus became the keystone of the musical structure early on and we improvised a bit around it in London. Paul found that sample on an old folk guitar instructional record, and cut it from two instances of the same lyric over two different chords. That set the key and tempo of the track. The trick was figuring out a way to move off of those two chords, so the bass does the job of reframing the two chords so that the song move in a more interesting way. The alpenhorn solo at the end came straight off a Swiss record that Paul found, documenting the customs of a small town. The wind sound at the very end I made on one of Nigel’s very special vintage synthesizers by tweaking the frequency knob of a filtered white noise source. analog wind….
I haven't followed the thread for a looong time so I don't know if it's been said here already, since this news is almost a month old, but Beirut's new album The Rip Tide is due for release on August 30th.
Also Mister Heavenly, a super group, is releasing their first album in august. Yay for august!
Also Mister Heavenly, a super group, is releasing their first album in august. Yay for august!
i'm waiting for a copy that isn't a 128 --> 320 transcode, and didn't leak 3 months early. >_>
I'm currently listening to this disc and I can definitely identify with you as a major fan and with the fucking awful bit as well. The sound on the album is so basic and boring that all the songs blend together into a mass of musical butter that you can't exactly swallow.
Probably a bit harsh, I know, but the new album is devoid of anything that made me a fan of Incubus in the first place.
The music is way too centered around the singer. Brandon's voice is still great, but it isn't anything special without great songwriting surrounding it. The guitarist is probably the only other member who stands out and that's probably a stretch. I'd totally buy it if someone told me that this is another Brandon solo album.
/rant
The music is way too centered around the singer. Brandon's voice is still great, but it isn't anything special without great songwriting surrounding it. The guitarist is probably the only other member who stands out and that's probably a stretch. I'd totally buy it if someone told me that this is another Brandon solo album.
/rant
Oh wow, I didn't even know the entire album was leaked until today. Derp.
After listening to it, I'm actually gonna have to agree as well. I didn't make judgments before since I had only listened to two songs, but everything about it being generic and bland is unfortunately true.
Also, forgot to mention an album I'm REALLY looking forward to:
311's Universal Pulse. Sooooo hyped, and Sunset In July is a really good song.
After listening to it, I'm actually gonna have to agree as well. I didn't make judgments before since I had only listened to two songs, but everything about it being generic and bland is unfortunately true.
Also, forgot to mention an album I'm REALLY looking forward to:
311's Universal Pulse. Sooooo hyped, and Sunset In July is a really good song.
Haven't heard that many of this year's releases yet, but the two albums that I'd been the most fucking blown away by so far were definitely Cold Cave's Cherish The Light Years (got it after reading Glen's review of it many pages back in this thread and all I can say is fucking huge thanks for mentioning it man, that album really delivers) and Septic Flesh's The Great Mass (I highly recommend it to all metal fans in this thread).
Blackfield's Welcome To My DNA is growing on me more and more with each and every listen but it will never reach the same level as their previous two in my book.
I wonder what Dream Theater had come up with without Portnoy.
And I'm disappointed that the new Opeth won't sound like the albums I know and love from them and would've hoped to hear more of in the same style (but that is very unlikely after seeing that cover, the song titles and finding out about the fact that there'll be no growls). Akerfeldt no longer likes metal, so I guess it was only a matter of time before the entire band would change their direction in style.
That being said, new Opeth could still sound interesting, but I'm rather looking forward to Akerfeldt's collaboration with Steven Wilson in that regard, as well as SW's solo album.
And the "new" (yeah, I'm aware it was released at the start of the year) Iron & Wine is mediocre. And didn't even bother getting new Radiohead after hearing so many bad opinions about it.
Have a nice day.
Blackfield's Welcome To My DNA is growing on me more and more with each and every listen but it will never reach the same level as their previous two in my book.
I wonder what Dream Theater had come up with without Portnoy.
And I'm disappointed that the new Opeth won't sound like the albums I know and love from them and would've hoped to hear more of in the same style (but that is very unlikely after seeing that cover, the song titles and finding out about the fact that there'll be no growls). Akerfeldt no longer likes metal, so I guess it was only a matter of time before the entire band would change their direction in style.
That being said, new Opeth could still sound interesting, but I'm rather looking forward to Akerfeldt's collaboration with Steven Wilson in that regard, as well as SW's solo album.
And the "new" (yeah, I'm aware it was released at the start of the year) Iron & Wine is mediocre. And didn't even bother getting new Radiohead after hearing so many bad opinions about it.
Have a nice day.
likely everyone who will care will see my post in the metalheads thread, but i'll post it here just to be sure
new Exhumed album streaming. the full thing. on metalsucks. listen.
http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/06/28/exclusive-full-album-stream-exhumeds-all-guts-no-glory
new Exhumed album streaming. the full thing. on metalsucks. listen.
http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/06/28/exclusive-full-album-stream-exhumeds-all-guts-no-glory
Man, the new Bon Iver album was a complete disappointment to me. The entire album is just a snooze fest to me.
Burst Apart was a great surprise though. I think it's even better than Hospice.
Also, the new Wild Beasts album, Smother, is just as great as their previous albums. I think I might have to go see them in concert next month.