Ror-Shak: “Deep”
I have a tough time critiquing a full album when there are multiple vocalits. Each vocalist can bring to the table a new vibe, a new technique or a new feel to the album. One good example is Nouvelle Vague, the bosa nova style French female vocalist group that revamps songs by such bands as Sex Pistols, Depeche Mode and Joy Division.
What helps “Deep” hold up as a complete album is the production and mixing of the two members of Ror-Shak, Stakka and DJ DB. Both are very well known in the Drum & Bass world. DJ DB was one of the first supporters of D&B in America and Stakka is a principal in the label that brought Fujiya & Miyagi to our shores. Given their backgrounds, they’re able to successfully meld their beats together and sampled vamps. There is a dark and mysterious element to this album, hence the title. Helping to enhance this feel is the albums guest vocalists – Julee Cruise, Lisa Shaw, Wendy Starland and Chantel Claret from Morningwood. Besides Chantel, you’ve most likely heard these vocalists at some night club as you danced the night away (if clubbing is your thing).
It’s also easy to hear the Zero 7 influence, as both artists site them as inspiration for the album. An interesting point to their story is that they actually started out by producing a dancefloor tune that took hold of many clubs and became a sought after track. After their initial success they agreed to collaborate on a full album but it was during the making of the album that they began moving away from pure dancefloor D&B to more mellow and easier listening grooves.
The two stand out tracks for me are “A Forest” and “Heist”. “A Forest” features Chantel Claret from Morningwood. It starts off sounding a bit like a Depeche Mode song. The same high treble guitar sound with a bunch of reverb. Then Stakka turns the beat up and Chantel’s voice comes soaring in. “Heist”, on the other hand, doesn’t involve any vocals. It’s a real dark moment in the album and we find it towards the end of the album. Some of the beats sampled remind me of the recent masterpiece by Knife. There are also moments during the song that I’m reminded of the movie Labryinth – the part when the young female is in distress, running for her life from Bowie only to find that she has no choice but to face her fear of the labryinth.
It’s nothing mind blowing but I don’t think that’s what these two were going after. I think they were looking to make a record that you could pop on during any number of occasions. Some tracks you could easily see a hundred kids blaring at 3 am waving their glowsticks in the air going nuts while other tracks you can easily see yourself cruising in the car on a nice Sunday afternoon. It allows your mind to drift and for a moment or two to think deep thoughts. Nothing to unfamalier for this philosopher major.
If you’re a fan of Portishead, trip-hop, drum & bass, electronic lounge or just a curious music lover, I would recommend giving this one a shot.
Links of Interest:
MP3 – “A Forest”
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I’m back and intact
My vacation out to the Left Coast was remarkable. You couldn’t ask for a better time. I’m not the biggest fan of L.A. but my sister lives there so it brings it up a few notches. We then headed up the coast, through Santa Barabara and landed in the magical land of Big Sur. And I mean magical. The place is one of the greatest spots in our country. We stayed at Fernwood Resort, which is basically a few motel rooms, tent cabins and camping spots along Rt. 1 or Pacific Coast Highway. The owner, BBQ Dave, makes one of the greatest Rib Eye steaks you’ll ever have. He uses a peppery BBQ sauce, wraps the rib eye with a string, smokes it for a day and then throws it up in the grill to order. You could cut the meat with a spoon. Little did we know, Bobby Flay has approved this wonderful piece of meat – AND IT ONLY COST $18.95!
We got to hang with some old friends, recent San Fran implants, and smoked some stogies as a celebration for our gathering. It was also my birthday this past Saturday so we took in a ball game at AT&T park and saw a boring offensive game, 1-0, where the only run was scored by Barry Bonds, hitting his 739 homer. And guess who missed the homer. We got in at the end of the bottom of the 1st and he hit the damn thing as we were walking in.
My girlfriend and I are now completely obsessed with the city of San Francisco. We stayed just over the bay in Oakland in a part of the city called Ridgeport. It was a nice area and we could easily see ourselves living there. But as life goes, nothing is ever that easy. Unless you’ve watched the DVD The Secret then everything is easy, all you have to do is manifest everything and it will come to you, right?
Ok ok, it’s enough blabbering about my personal life. Now it’s time to get back in to the swing of things. I’ve been getting PR about the new Queens of the Stone Age album, “Era Vulgaris”, due out June 12th. So far they’ve sent me an MP3 and this YouTueb video called “The Bulby Video (F. Sick Sick Sick)”. It’s kind of interesting, funny but also a bit annoying. This is apparently the first single off the album, which features Julian Casablanca providing background vocals. I’ll have another song from the album up in a few days. I will also have a review of the Ror-Shak album, Deep. I’m hoping to have all these things and more up as soon as possible. Here is the QOTSA video:
Boston Marathon – Track Amanda
My girlfriend is running in the Boston Marathon for the second year in a row now. Quite inspirational and if you come across this blog today, see how she is doing by plugging in her bib number at www.baa.org. Her number is 20878.
Monday Marathon Mix:
The Clientele – “Monday’s Rain”
Huey Lewis and The News – “Heart and Soul”
The Avalanches – “Little Journey”
Shuggie Otis – “Inspiration Information”
El Perro Del Mar – “Coming Down the Hill”
And I’ll be out of comission for about a week as we are going on a week long vacation to the left coast.
Contriva – Separate Chambers
Links of Interest:
http://www.myspace.com/contriva
Purchase “Separate Chambers” : Amazon
I love family reunions. Not just because I get to see how interesting and unique each member of my family can be, but also to share common interests. Two particular cousins (husband and wife) share similar taste in music as I and after the last reunion we began introducing each other to new music. They mostly introduced me to the electronic world, a world I’ve been exploring for the past couple years. In return, I provided mostly obscure, or as obscure as I can get, indie bands. The range of indie is quite sparse from your psychedelic chilled out blues of Brightblack Morning Light to one of my favorite electronic groups from the UK, Hot Chip. The amount of music received at one time was a good amount. I uploaded the albums all at once. If you’re an owner of an iPod, and you most likely are if you’re reading this blog, you’ll understand this next phenomenon. I just discovered one of the bands. Why is this strange? I uploaded the music about 5 months ago.
With the pod, I have a tendency to look over bands that I may not know or I heard briefly and was in a funky mood and therefore never returned. I’m using shuffle more and more and it’s because of the shuffle that I found my new go to band – Contriva.
Contriva is from Berlin, Germany. They consist of four band members (guitar, bass guitar, keys and drums). They all met each other in 1997 as schoolmates and have been making music together off and on since. They’ve had their side projects, one member plays with a favorite Berlin based group of mine, The Notwist. And it’s been some time since they’ve put out an album together, roughly three years. They’ve pumped out some EP’s and a couple LP’s – “Tell Me When” in 2000 and “If You Had Stayed” in 2003. Monika Records put out those two. They even started their own vinyl label called Lok Musik. Lok stands for locomotion, which takes us in to their latest release and their sound – many describe it as traveling music.
Their latest album, “Separate Chambers”, was released on Morr Music in November 2006. They’ve developed their sound mainly around the instruments. Vocals don’t really enter in to the equation, except for on a few occasions. Their goal is to develop instrumental pop music that doesn’t rely on the vocals to carry the song. It’s an interesting approach and one that has been adopted more and more by artists. My music catalogue and memory only goes so far but the first thing that jumps out at me right away is to compare their philosophy with Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear. Noah developed his latest masterpiece over a two year period and while there are a significant amount of vocals in the tracks, they are used more for their instrumental value versus their lyrical value. In many cases you can barely hear what he’s saying. And there are loads of pop themes in Person Pitch.
“Separate Chambers” starts us off with a quintessential traveling song. It might as well be called The Traveler but it’s actually called “Good To Know”. A slow grooving beat and a repetitive bass line sets the mood while a distorted twangy guitar takes us on a wild journey through the back roads. Great way to ease us in to the album. There are two songs that jump out at me. One just happens to have vocals.
“Before” is a bit of a break from the first few tracks. It’s basically a straight up pop tune. Something we could easily hear on our local radio stations. It’s really a beautiful song. And the female vocals on this track help take it to that radio friendly level.
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“Centipede” is the track, in my opinion, that encompasses Contriva’s sound. The slow guitar riff and eerie sound effects in the back create tension at first. Then it’s all released as the drum beat settles in and the grand piano enters. After a few more bars of the beginning theme, the song changes key for a second and then back to the original theme. It repeats this flow for a little under a minute then it collapes down to just the acoustic guitar again and eerie background noises and then we climb back up. It’s quite a simple formula – instrumental pop music.
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If you’re looking for that perfect Spring / early Summer album, where you can go out on your porch after a hard days work, crack a beer and just relax, you need to look no further.
Ed Banger Pics from HIRO
I promised a few pics from the NYC weekend. If you don’t know me personally or our friend, Mr. 2000, then these won’t really mean much to you other then the fact that we look like we’re having a good time. And I guess that’s ulimately the purpose of posting them. Because, man, it was a good time.
Mr. 2000 with his signature “Hand behind the head” move -
I’m a maniac, maniac…
Kip in the crowd with champagne glass in hand -
Your’s truly in front of Justice -
VBS.TV – Live Arcade Fire
I’ve been watching a lot of online TV these days. I got rid of my cable a couple months back and have been struggling to find decent content to watch on my 32″ LCD TV. Cable or Satellite will most likely be turned back on but I’m very intrigued by the online TV concept. Just go over to Joost.com to understand just how much potential this new P2P service has when it comes to television. More to come on Joost in a later post. I just got my invitation to be a beta tester last week. If you’re looking for an invite, I don’t have any right now. They only give you invites after being a beta tester for at least a couple weeks. Most of my invites are already spoken for anyway. Maybe I’ll do some sort of contest if I have any left over.
Before a service like Joost can really take off and be widespread, I’ve been watching online TV from various websites. One in particular is the Vice Records channel, VBS.tv.
To introduce you to VBS.tv, I’ve picked one of my favorite clips from their “Bangs” series. Lance Bangs is a filmmaker that is well known for his work with Jackass and music video’s with Belle & Sebastian and Arcade Fire.
The clip below is Arcade Fire playing “Wake Up” at Judson Memorial Church in NYC this past February. It looks like the encore and they’ve decided to finish up the show by playing their instruments in the middle of the crowd. Looks pretty intense and makes you feel really pissed about missing out on the tickets for your local show. Sorry, but I just had to rant because I failed to pick one up. And what are they going for now on the black market? Any way, that’s just a quick cry for help to any Bostonian’s with an extra.
Busy P Diary – North American Shows
To read some broken English by Busy P, head over to The Fader and read about the Ed Banger North American shows.
Couple highlights
- Looks like someone else had their eye on Busy’s Ice Cream jacket.
- NYC, you got a bit of a low grade from Busy when it comes to dancing
- Montreal seems to be the place to go to see an Ed Banger show in N. America
- These guys love their Cheap Sun Glasses
NYC Weekend – Ed Banger and LCD
What a weekend, as Brooklyn Vegan pointed out the day after the beginning of the shit show that was this past weekend. The beginning I speak of was the GBH promoted Ed Banger show at the Hiro Ballroom on Thursday night.
Show 1: Ed Banger Records at Hiro Ballroom
Audio Sample: Justice – “Waters of Nazareth”
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I made it in to the Big Apple on Thursday night at 8:30 after a roughly 4 and half hour trip down from Boston on the LimoLiner (great way to transport oneself from city to city). Straight from the drop off point I met the hood rats and made our way quickly over to the ballroom. This is where we were greeted by a wrap-around-the-block line, but no worries, we had reserved a table ahead of time, which allowed us to bump the line and head right to our table – Thanks Alex and Vince.
After a few Grey Gooses, some glasses of champaigne and other fun stuff, The Presets began their set, and in my opinion, put on a very good showing. This Sydney based electronic duo switches from bass guitar, keys and a pretty sick drum kit to keep the songs unique and beats original. Their soft vocals float secretly behind these infectious beats. It was a great start to the night.
Shortly after, Busy P, DJ Mehdi, SebastiAn, Justice and the rest of the Ed Banger groupies filled the stage and the DJ sets began. Overall, the sets were pretty solid. Something I didn’t expect was that they all seemed to add in some classic tunes. I remember one Nirvana track being mixed and the Paul Simon classic, “You Can Call Me Al”.
One observation our gang seemed to all agree upon was that it wasn’t as loud as we thought an Ed Banger show would be. Maybe it had something to do with the venue but in the end, this wasn’t any big buzz killer. We still felt like we were in a modern day Andy Warhol flic with all the red velvet booths, champaign, drugs, crowded dance floor and good vibes. The highlight of the night for me was getting dragged up on stage by Mr. Ted-E and having my pic taken in front of Justice. I hope to have it in my hands soon. Currently it’s in Puerto Rico…Vince, send it along as soon as possible buddy. Plus, there are more characters that were at this show then Gawker, Nikola from Ambrel and Cobra Snake would have you believe. Although their pictures are a bit more artsy then the one’s I’ll post.
Ed Banger Website: http://www.edbangerrecords.com/
Show 2: LCD Soundsystem at Bowery Ballroom
Audio Sample: “Someone Great”
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Heading over to the Bowery from the West side we ran in to a wall of traffic as part of Canal street was closed due to construction. Perfect timing. All three of us not being from NYC, we were told by a fairly reliable source that the Bowery had a 12 am curfew. With this knowledge, we were a bit antsy by the slow traffic and made our way by foot. Upon arriving we asked the merch crew what time they went on the night before and the answer…12 am…current time, 10 pm. So, we had some drinking time ahead of us.
By 11:45 James and Co. started to take the stage so we headed on up from the basement bar to find a sardine packed floor. We made it to the balcony where we found some space and stiff-as-mannequin onlookers. Don’t get me wrong, the floor kids were getting groovy but the upstairs gang needed to take some lessons. And I was happy to teach them.
Their set was a decent mix between new tracks from Sound of Silver and old, if you can consider them old. They jammed out fan favorites “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” and “North American Scum” but my personal favorite was “Yeah”. LCD really gave me a feeling that I haven’t had at a concert for some time. Probably not since Hot Chip rolled through Boston in the Fall. It’s one of those feelings you have where everything around you seems perfectly aligned. You’ve got your best girl to your right, one of your best buddies to your left and one of the greatest bands on the market in front of you and they are hitting on all cylinders. Sorry for the cosmic mumbo jumbo but I’m reading the Bill Bryson book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything”.
The end, however, came way to soon. The set was maybe 45 minutes and then a fantastic rendition of “Somone Great” and” New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” were played for the encore. The main downfall of the show is that they left us kind of hanging. Could have easily enjoyed another hour. To their benefit, James Murphy did have the flu and they were rocking around Europe for a full month. Now they’ll go get some rest and come back out on the road as they continue on their quest to get the masses dancing.
In the end, both shows were impressive and jam packed full of craziness. I’m excited for LCD to make their way up north to Boston in May where we have 8 tix locked up and we’re looking to take the dance floor over.
Purchase “Sound of Silver: Amazon – Insound - iTunes
LCD Soundsystem website: http://lcdsoundsystem.com/
DFA Records website: http://www.dfarecords.com/
About Editor
Name: Luke "Kip" Owen
Location: Boston, MA
Contact: kippy[AT]hip2besquare[DOT]net
Twitter: twitter.com/kipdog
Youtube: youtube.com/kipdog
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