Soundtracks of our life 1

[RobB]

Angie,
the 3,000 figure is a mixture of records,cassettes and cds and they've taken 30+ years to collect,but they are at least all albums.

.....i've got loads and loads of singles too. [help]

[Angie]

Angie,

Nope, that was Michael!

But I feel your pain, Rob. We've got two 1,500 CD racks that are overflowing, and that's not counting the vinyl. It's one main reason why we're looking to buy a house in the not-too-distant future. We've definitely outgrown our apartment, but in a good way. [music]

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mainly for ~michael this - i was on the newly revamped LOW site and there's a new live video with some very revealing interview footage with alan sparhawk. man, he was tired and emotional and very much on the defenisve about the new turn the band have taken with 'the great destroyer'. i guess it seems a lot of people aren't hip on the album (myself included). it's interesting the songs they showed - only 2 new ones and otherwise mostly old 'hits' (shame, amazing grace, lazer beam). but i thought the performance was by their standards pretty edgy (not in a positive way), fuelled by a sort of repressed anger on alan's part. all very wierd. it all gave me a bad feeling... [:xx] as he kept reiterating, they've been at it 11 years now (that emphasis in itself was telling)

didn't stop him buying a coupla new guitars from the sub pop advance though. and mimi now plays with... 2 cymbals ... what next? jon bonham style power beats? [:o]

joking aside, it seems all is not well in the LOW camp at present. i hope it sorts itself out, i really like what i've seen of those guys til now.

(the rest of you can wake up now! )

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Angie,

But I feel your pain, Rob. We've got two 1,500 CD racks that are overflowing...

I think I feel both yours and Robs' pain .. 1500??? I don't even have 150. I wouldn't know where to start with 1500 I'd spend all day wondering what to listen to. [crazy] At an average of 45 mins each, that's nearly 47 days of continous back-to-back listening.

[Spookrijder]

The Sightings one is ok, definitely a bit more on the conventional side compared to their last one.

Funny, I find this Sightings album quite more radical than their former ones, if indeed less confrontational.

The LCD Soundsytem stuff is good, but it sort of begs you to play "spot the influence" while you listen to it. There's that "Never As Tired" track which is a dead ringer for John Lennon or even a Led Zeppelin ballad, the last track is so incredibly ENO-esque you could fool the man himself, "Movement" is purely channeling the Fall right down to the "-uh" he adds at the end of every word. It definitely is entertaining, but it also seems to have a distinct "sell by" date on it.

Yeah, indeed. Strange enough it bothers me lesser than other bands like Interpol and surely Franz Ferdinand. The eighties are totally hype at the moment and it's a strange phenomenon to hear all those bands who sounds like some blind test for the eighties, yes playing "spot the influence".

Could be LCD Soundsystem is the least interesting band on DFA, at least nothing to compare with near-to-genius Black Dice [tup]

Now playing Belgian hype monster Soulwax with their last opus "Any Minute Now", a quite good record but quite heavy on the stomach: too many ideas, too full, too produced, but they could become big big.

[L'Enfer]

Despite owning over 3,000 albums,the "foreign language" ones i can count on one hand.

A recent addition though is my very first Spanish album, by a duo/group called Mus. the album is called "Divina Lluz" ( "Divine Light".......although sung in Spanish,Mus have very kindly had the songtitles/lyrics translated and written in English )

Tuneful and atmospheric,Mus wouldn't sound out of place as part of the 4ad roster.

Nice band indeed, but they don't sing in Spanish, it's "Bable", a dialect from Asturias..... northern Spain. All their albums are very recommendable at least compared to the majority of Spanish music.
Other interesting bands are Migala especially "Arde" and "Restos de un incendio", they sing in English (very funny Spanish accent by the way...), Christina Rosenvinge's "Foreing land" which has been commented in the CQD board before, La Buena Vida "Soidemersol", Sr Chinarro " El porque de mis peinados" and "El ventriloquo de si mismo" and many more, still i'm not very much into the Spanish music scene.... [crazy]

Lately i've been listening to the latest Andrew Bird "Andrew Bird and the mysterious production of eggs", great as usual .
The soft pink truth's "do you want new wave or..." even better than the first one, very enjoyable.
Bertrand Betsch's "Pas de bras, pas de chocolat" this one is a very nice pop record, still i prefer his first "opus"... and i love Blonde Redhead's "Misery is a butterfly" one of last year's best pop records, not very appreciated by the critics but [:o] what do they know !!!

[RobB]

Apologies to Angie & ~Michael for getting your forum names mixed up......i'm still trying to work out who is who! [help]

....and thanks to L'enfer for putting me right about the Mus language issue.

[fog]

Mary Timony has a new album in a couple of months Matthew!

Really?!? Woo-hoo!!!!! [king]

[Spookrijder]

Lately i've been listening to the latest Andrew Bird "Andrew Bird and the mysterious production of eggs", great as usual .

I'm slightly jealous you've already got the last Andrew Bird [fire] . Are you writing for some local musiczine of some sort, L'Enfer

Just discovered a Belgian band called Monsoon who are making some very intense, extravert and slightly tormented music. It seems like they opened for PJ Harvey at Amsterdam's Paradiso. Their album simply called "Speak" is quite brilliant and opposite to LCD Soundsystem, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand, it's rather difficult to spot their influences . The main singer is a woman and she owes a very impressive and beautiful voice. She's somewhere between a more sensual Polly Jean Harvey and a tougher Jennifer Charles from Elysian Fields. There's even a very atmospheric and smoky jazz-like tune on the record and her vocal is totally convincing. A band to watch on the international scene, obviously.

[L'Enfer]

Lately i've been listening to the latest Andrew Bird "Andrew Bird and the mysterious production of eggs", great as usual .

I'm slightly jealous you've already got the last Andrew Bird [fire] . Are you writing for some local musiczine of some sort, L'Enfer

I'm not
I found it totally by chance, i was at one of the local music stores around here and well, they usually don't have anything interesting (Nicolai Dunger's albums have no distribution in Spain for example [fire] , i order them on/line, same with Rune Grammofon and so on....)
so i came across this funny cover and when i read it was a new Andrew bird i just went and bought it

[Spookrijder]

Now playing "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts" by M83 and that's an epic synth extravaganza recorded by two French guys who's able to melt Klaus Schulze, Lightwave and My Bloody Valentine without an inch of bad taste or irony, the music is just moving, gorgeous and, yes, beautiful.

[Spookrijder]

Yeah guyrls, just finished playing "Blue Cathedral" by the mighty Comets On Fire and I'm just heated [fire] . But no kidding, if those guys are indeed loud, I feel like some people here could find his/her place into that record, I'm sure about it. If they are Pink Floyd's fans, I'm sure there is a least one around here, try a listen, but furthermore if you're touched by impressively well composed long songs and their subsequent even longer bridges, this is for you. And I'm pretty sure most free jazz aficionados would be glad to hear the best present acid-psyche-rock band of the universe flirting with Albert Ayler or pussyfooting The Duke himself. I don't invent this for there's a song, in fact totally intrumental, which title is "Pussy Foot The Duke" where there's even a very fine throughout piano solo, of course surrounded by multilayered instrumentation like organs, surprisingly clean guitars and very souple drums. I don't know who's member plays that piano but he's pretty talented, imho.

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spook - you probably know, but just wanted to remind you - supersilent are in brussels playing the 'VCA' on march 11th!

[Spookrijder]

Yeah, D?c, I know .

Now playing "Corymb" by Boom Bip and behind that rather pedestrian if funny name, there's someone to follow, for sure. I thought this music being more danceable stuff, yes it is, but in such a fine, articulate and imaginative way. This album is composed of some remix (by Mogwai, Boards of Canada, Lali Puna, Four Tet, etc.) of tracks from the previous "seed to sun" album + some originals, among others two Peel sessions, near surprisingly, which shows Boom Bip in a more post-rock vain. The remixers here gives an idea of where the music is going from and to. A discovery. [tup]

[Spookrijder]

This thread looks more and more like my own blog of some sort, gosh, hence a musical one, kind of musical diary.

Ate pizzas while playing "Greetings from Michigan The Great Lake State" by Sufjan Stevens and what a wonderful album this is. Anyone attracted by fine songwriting and arrangement should try a listen. His voice isn't too impressive at first, but suits the soundscape admirably, if only because they share the same modesty of expression. It was easy to think of some very melancholic Beach Boys, or just Brian Wilson better, but then you rather meet Van Dyke Parks instead. And slowly, my memories of more recent stuff surfaced : "Eureka" by Jim O'Rourke, but without electronica, then some Australian connection : Eric Matthews and Richard Davies, among others.
Then played "It's heavy in here" by Eric Matthews" from 1995, yes, the voice, somewhere, some horns here and there, but that record if fine is BBB (remember? Boring But Beautiful or vice versa); Then "There's never been a crowd like this" by Richard Davies from 1996, that's it! Even if vocally, sonically, nothing reminds me of Sufjan Stevens. Richard Davies is the son of the impossible fornication of Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart, but he looks more like Barrett, though he mainly looks like Richard Davies and it's even better. Richard Davies is a genius, if a modest genius. One proof at least : "Instinct" by The Moles, Davies' ex-band. Check him out! The guy has just put away his guitar and his songs to choose some more acceptable and more financially sustainable job, a pity, a shame, a suicide. I'm mourning. [l)]