Written by 365AAY on August 23rd, 2010
by Arika
Most punk enthusiasts will tell you the same thing about punk rock: it was basically nonexistent from 1999-2005. While that’s not exactly true, many people were turned off by the TRL-ization of punk via bands like Blink-182 and New Found Glory, and the re-emergence (and co-opting) of emo in punk music was enough to denounce punk—or at least cling to those old Dead Kennedys records. It could be said that all-too bleak era of punk was over around 2006 with bands like Be Your Own Pet rolling into the scene—and they were hell on two wheels. This band’s self-titled debut was one of those albums that made punk exciting again on a rudimentary, primal level.
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Written by 365AAY on August 22nd, 2010
by Michael
…and so, it was time for some Beach Boys. The influence of The Beach Boys on contemporary popular music is truly immeasurable. Their catalogue seems to have been graced with a re-evaluation in the last decade or so, twinned with an increasingly potent sway over indie music in that time, but not only that. As well as their DNA being clear for all to hear in the music of titanic critical darlings Animal Collective, it is arguably even more upfront in the sound of genre-surfing weirdos Mr. Bungle’s 1999 cult classic “California,” to use one example which shows how disparate it can be. Despite all of this, the group’s vitality continues to go unnoticed in the mainstream, after the abortion of SMiLE conceded full pop glory to The Beatles in its near-entirety. Surf’s Up is just another jewel in the crown on the ground which some of music’s leading lights have picked up in recent times.
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Written by 365AAY on August 21st, 2010
by Abid
This album seems to be most inspired by that glitchy texture prevalent on Dub and other Electronica based music. Perhaps the only real way to describe is the feeling that the noise is turned inside out and reversed, and if done right, can produce a consistent bop. Combine this with the experimental and unpredictable way that an artist like Muhsinah utilizes her vocals, and you’ve got one fractured aesthetic to construct in your mind alone. Such is the nature of this album that you will gradually begin to accept the seemingly irrational sounds offered to you, if only to not feel alienated; and if the trends in progressive music are any sign, chances are you won’t want to be.
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Written by 365AAY on August 20th, 2010
by Kevin
Picture this scene: It’s 1983, and you have been waiting for the Replacements’ new album ‘Hootenanny’ ever since you tore though ‘Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash’ and the ‘Stink’ E.P. You put the record on your player, and the first thing you hear is Paul Westerberg saying, without a care in the world, ‘Hootenanny in E’. What follows is the most disjointed and off-key, off-tempo, almost offending bad blues jam in the history of recorded music. But why?
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Written by 365AAY on August 18th, 2010
by Phil
The title of Donny Hathaway‘s 1973 album describes what made Donny Hathaway one of the greatest musicians ever, while at the same time marking his one of his major downfalls. “Extension of a Man” has the exact meaning that you would expect, the album has Donny Hathaway “extending” himself into reached of the music world he was yet to venture into even considering the rather eclectic “Come Back Charleston Blue” which he released as a soundtrack the year earlier. In my days writing here, I have described a lot of album as unique or unconfined, and that has never been exaggerated as I find that to be a feature of that qualifies an album for me to recommend, but if one album could ever fit those terms, this Donny Hathaway album would be it. He does straight forward classical arrangements and easy listening along with the soul he had become know for with his first three albums.
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Written by 365AAY on August 17th, 2010
by Dareen
Ultramagnetic MC’s Kool Keith reveals his alter ego- Dr. Octagon, a sleazy, menacing, and juvenile gynecologist. Often revered as an album far ahead of it’s time, Kool Keith paired with producer Dan The Automator and turntablist DJ Q-Bert to create the sound that took hip hop moving to the year 3000. Dr. Octagonecologyst rejuvenated the underground hip hop scene. Kool Keith’s unquestionably bizarre and controversial lyrics, merged with DJ Qbert’s innovative scratching and Dan The Automator’s futuristic production were what helped to establish Dr. Octagonecologyst as one of the strongest hip hop albums of the 1990′s.
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Written by 365AAY on August 16th, 2010
by Arika
In late 2009, bloggers circulated a vintage video featuring a bespectacled, awkward-yet-attractive Italian man explaining the meaning of a gibberish song, “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” to a fake classroom of lovely ladies—and the song absolutely rocked. Bloggers claimed the jingle had been written by an unnamed Italian composer for the express purpose of demonstrating what the English language (and American-style rock songs) sounded like to foreigners. The story was a little off-base and misattributed, but what was even more irksome was the fact that so few people ever explained the identity of this Italo-rocker. His name is Adriano Celentano, and if you thought “Prisencolinensinainciusol” was great, look into I Mali del Secolo (The Evils of the Century), one of the most important albums in Celentano’s vast discography.
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Written by 365AAY on August 15th, 2010
by Michael
It has to observed as quite the quirk that this, an album frequently forwarded as one of, if not THE greatest black metal album of all time, came from Sweden, in the immediate aftermath of the peak of the early Norwegian black metal scene. Even stranger a phenomenon is that despite being a black metal album in style, Storm Of The Light’s Bane bears the influence of the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene to which Dissection were connected, having shared rehearsal space with At The Gates after relocating to the city in 1993, a scene which was the target of hatred from some of the angriest of first-wave Norwegians. Nonetheless, whether melodic black metal or so-called ‘blackened’ death metal, the record stands as a landmark of metal to which sub-genre feuds do no justice, where a listen will.
Posted in 1. Michael's Sundays | View Comments
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