Archive for the 'features' Category

Gravy Blurbs #02: Now! Update

Published by
tyler
August 27, 2007 in features, indie and tunes. 0 Comments

If you’ve been keeping up with us as we blasted you with rants of mainstream blasphemy roughing up the indie front, you may be interested to know that the Now That’s What I Call Indie! (aka This Is Next) compilation was just reviewed over at Pitchfork.

A whopping 0.0 rating with a description as follows: “In a sense, This Is Next is totally dispensible; a silly and ill-advised compendium of material freely available to anyone with the initiative to seek it out… A shoddy, transparent, and poorly packaged ploy to sell indie rock cachet to the “casual” consumer, this compilation is far more condescending than some dude who gets pissed off when he sees a Shins CD at Starbucks.”

Here’s a tip of the hat to LeMay for telling it like it is.

Skin of the Gravy: A Look Back On Two Epics

Published by
tyler
August 16, 2007 in looking-back, features, rehash and tunes. 1 Comment

[image courtesy of Lost Garden]

I know, I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to music, and while I’ll be the first one with my grubby hands in the indie-rock dollar bin, I’m still attached to the idea that music should be epic and fanciful. That it should not only go the places it’s told, but take itself places as well, not unlike how fairytales are abound with dragons and mysterious foggy woods and all. I mean truly, the instruments speak a whole world of history when you let them, but that’s soon forgotten when everything is crammed into that 4-minute space; in a fashion where they just become one of the pack, right next to the 4/4 drumming.

Two artists that I’ll highlight here are by no means starving, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still have the potential of a transcendental street-urchin. I’m going to highlight each in turn with two often overlooked side-projects that you should turn your ears toward.

The first is The Decemberists, who, despite what it may seem, were not always picking their teeth over American politik or singing sea shantys. Back before the hey-day of Picaresque & their major label, they found the time to craft one EP by the name of The Tain, which was something of a masterpiece. An 18-minute seamless saga that was delicately synthesized from the Irish mythological tale “Táin Bó Cúailnge”. It has five movements in total, each one increasingly twisted & raw, and it literally bursts at the seams with instrumental guidance. I’ve listened to this enough by now that the words are second nature to me, and as the words turn the proverbial pages of the tale, moving from scene to scene, the instrumentals in their guiding light act to brush a scene behind it all.

Then there was Bell Orchestre, an instrumental supergroup that came together in 2005 involving many of the members of Arcade Fire. It was birthed out of the same singular silver lining as was The Tain, and it was something of a wonder. I had “Les Lumieres Pt. 1″ as my morning alarm for months. I would wake every morning to blinding sunshine and the slow rise of that track (which eventually erupts into the drum & horn madness that is Pt. 2 - but that was never part of my waking time). On the all, that album was a clever experiment, with tracks that drifted about as though they were scores to voiceless epic cartoons or otherwise just conceptually bizarre like the “Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)”, and still others that were merely progressions on an idea that carried themselves forward.

take a listen: (for The Tain, I recommend it in order, for obvious reasons)
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. I
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. II
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. III
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. IV
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. V
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 1
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 2
Bell Orchestre - Throw It On A Fire
Bell Orchestre - Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)

The Tain is, unfortunately impossible to buy new nowadays (wait for a reissue), but there are some used discs floating around, [see comment below] and Bell Orchestre’s Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light can be found over at Amazon for ~15 bucks.

(Header graphic courtesy of Lost Garden.)
(The Decemberists tracks were performed live @ The Metro back in 2005)

Summer School of ROCK

Published by
tyler
July 18, 2007 in features. 0 Comments

[dedicated to rocking the world]

Tunes Consumed is dedicated to the industry in all the shapes it can take. We’re always here to help the kids, you know, lend a hand where it’s needed, or just kick-start an aging industry. Now, behold our Summer School of Rock, where our very own team of research professionals perform statistical analyses, study the successes of our time, from that derive proven industry trends, and present YOU with some quickie cure-all tips for steering your band away from the dollar bin and into an industry powerhouse.

Step One: 
Ack! What am I gonna call myself?

Take any amateur, soon-to-be band leader and their very first concern will be “what do I call myself!?” Don’t sweat! Relax, take out a pen and some paper (plain white paper is best, but if you’ve only got lined paper on hand that’ll work too). In your best attempt at street graffitti write out your first and last name. Make sure to use lots of sharp angles and bold lines, and throw in some 3-dimensional shading while you’re at it. Now don’t lose that slip of paper, because not only is it your slick new band name, but it’s also your logo! See how easy that was?

Psychological Fact: It’s been proven that street graffitti elicits feelings of rebellion, fist fights and motorcycles, and since you’re entering the rock industry that’s exactly what you want.

Step Two:
Okay, my band name is pretty damn sweet.
Now, what do I name the album?

Alright, this one is a little more tricky, but don’t worry, our research staff has come up with a simple formula. Based on a year-long census of the 2007 entries into the rock industry, we can go through and derive an album name ourselves. Now watch, because it’s not as easy as step one. Below is a condensed list from the census, in case you were curious (honest-to-god entries!).

    Guillotine
    Hellride XXX
    Twenty Years of Rage
    We Crush Your Mind With The Thrash Inside
    We’ll Live and Die in These Towns
    On A Chariot Of Fire
    Four Years Beast Rage
    New Maps Of Hell
    Cruel     Melody

If you look closely you’ll notice a pattern.  Pretty simple, right? So what should yours look like? Well, as a professional wordsmith myself I can show the ropes, come up with a sample now and then you can practise on your own at home.

Clearly we’ll want to base our album name these metaphors: some death here, some rage there, and then an obscure histo-cultural reference (for distinctiveness, that way it will stand out on the WalMart shelves when you’re signed and distributed!). You may not have considered that last part by yourself, but hey, that’s why I get paid the big bucks.

Using this mathematical formula, denoting rage as a, cruel as c, death as d, and mussolini as m we can construct the following formula:

Album Name = d(m) = c + r
… … … Death By Mussolini’s Cruel Rage !

And that’s a ticket to the Top-10 for sure!

Psychological Fact: Political references that come from the past are astronomical in chart-topping album titles, because nobody can refute them, and they sound pretty sweet!

That’s it for the chapter on Naming Schemes, be sure to tune in next week for some more surefire hot tips!

Recent Retaliations.

  • rovzuljgan: Wow, cool man, big thanks! http://jamzfqsvdcph.com
  • Train Dolphins: Thanks your article is funny. I like your site.. thank you again
  • olly: you are too analytical. “The night starts here” is a terrific track… with a great prequal in...
  • cloudhead: Cloud cult not radiohead? Well radiohead DID finally get a myspace after all these years:...
  • jay: i know the lyrics sammi baby email me on jay211091@hotmail.co.uk
  • bagula bhagat: yeah this stuff is truly ingenius.. notice how the female vocals keep appearing as though in a...
  • squashed: are you guys over with the hiatus thing? hurry up. can’t be that much studying to be done. :P
  • misterjerk: BITCH! WHERE’D THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ CHEESE GO AT!!??






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