I was digging at their MySpace profile for “skeletons in their closet” and I find only this at their bio: “We are a three-piece band from Paris, born in Jan. 2009. Stop reading. This is about music.” And well, actually I have to admit it: music is what exactly not about lately the music business. It’s kind of sick, twisted joke, but actually this is reality. So, let’s take fucking business out of music and focus on music. And one pretty good option might be this Parisian band – meantime becoming quartet – which delivering some quite impressive post-hardcore/post-rock/post-what ever you might thinking of noisy and head kicking music. This is not for trend followers, not for posers. Not for your underage kids too. 😀 This is serious shit and although “A Series of Catastrophes and Consequences” was released in September 2009, it’s still sounding absolutely fresh and brutally honest – honestly brutal. Read more The Prestige – A Series of Catastrophes and Consequences (2009)
alternative rock
Waltari – Covers All! 25th Anniversary Album (2011)
Known as the crazy metal rockers from Finland, Waltari celebrate 25 years of existence and 20 years from the release of their first album. Frequently combining quite diverse music styles as alternative metal, progressive metal, death metal, hard rock, heavy metal, hip hop, industrial, pop, punk, rap, symphonic metal, techno and thrash metal, most of the band’s music is written by bass player Kärtsy Hatakka, while they lyrics are dealing mainly with personal feelings of anxiety, loneliness and the cruelty of the world, often with heavy irony and sarcasm. They crafted totally new combinations, sounds and approaches, pioneering and assimilating everything that is currently new and becoming a melting pot of musical genres.
Released 11 studio albums and 3 compilations, “Covers All!” deliver a nice collection of covers from diverse artists such as System Of A Down, Midnight Oil, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Madonna, David Bowie, The Cure, etc Read more Waltari – Covers All! 25th Anniversary Album (2011)
April – Ten Stones (2009)
April seems to be a very popular name among artist: a couple of bands running using this simple name which make pretty hard to identify one of them, make the difference. After some hard digging I find on MySpace the profile of this French duo, from there I’ve get to their official site and Facebook profile. I thought “Ten Stones” is their actual album, but I was wrong, it was released back in 2009. Merging classic music elements with electronic layers and samplers, combining pop, rock, indie and trip hop elements, JiBé (music, voice) and Flora (voice) delivered their own flavored music. Read more April – Ten Stones (2009)
Jennifer Lo-Fi – Noia (2011)
“Troffea” starts as an indie fueled jazz song, complex rhythmic constructions, powerful vocals and smooth guitar works build up an interesting, but dizzy song. Jennifer Lo-Fi? Inspired and catchy name for a newcomer band.
“Neveo” follows in a more conventional manner, if we can admit as conventional a mixture of power pop and indie rock aromas and psychedelic rock resonances with some tasty Brazilian spices. “Ovos” starts as a rock ballad with indie, blues and jazz infusions, they simply shifting from one thing to another, playing tight, energy full and from smooth and hypnotic themes they get violently hardcore. Impressive. And the best is yet to come. Read more Jennifer Lo-Fi – Noia (2011)
Dub Trio – IV (2011)
Their 2004 debut album “Exploring the Dangers of” was literally recorded as a live-dub experiment and the band managed to deliver their own unique interpretation of dub and push it further to the another level of an art form. DP – Dave Holmes (guitar & keyboards), Stu Brooks (bass & keyboards) and Joe Tomino (drums & Melodica) break down the walls between raggae, dub, electronica, rock, punk and heavy metal to bring to the surface their own powerful and breathing music.
Although I’m generally avoid any instrumental rock album because I consider them usually kind of meaningless and boring, Dub Trio have some kind of secret magic power, have that primal, ancient and natural force to keep your interest constantly high, to crush you down with their massive sound and expressive compositions. Read more Dub Trio – IV (2011)
Lou Reed and Metallica – Lulu (2011)
Metallica got a new lead singer or Mr. Lou Reed hired a metal band? This might be the clash of the titans, the collaboration of the millennium or a collision and disaster. The first sing released on YouTube, “The View”, in late September 2011, got up to date (and counting) 856,775 views from which 11,433 are dislikes and only 4,050 likes. One user wrote: “You’re know what I can’t wait for ? Willie Nelson and Slayer!!!!!!!!” Clash of the generations and styles? It’s kind of odd, after all these years and attempts of eliminate the genre limitations (in music I mean 👿 ), the audience seems to deliberately refuse any “violation” of the comfortable boundaries. I hear pretty much recently that idiograma “think outside of the box” while our parents, teachers, friends, politician, economists, priests and preachers, bosses and co-workers, the media, the internet (if someone consider it the closest person to him 😀 ), in less words, everybody and everything, pushing us back inside the box. The most obvious example is the Facebook. Instead taking advantage of the multitude of the internet (outside the box), most of the people are staying more and more captive exclusively on Facebook (inside the box). Talking with ex high-school lovers, growing sheep at virtual farms, read the news, giving likes to stranger’s cats or listening music, Facebook took over and for many becomes the internet itself, even further, the home and the family, the whole universe. Our feelings resume to giving – or not – likes superficially to “things” because we’re never leave that place, never dive beneath the surface. Any box is a prison and ladies and gentlemen, don’t matter what, I won’t imprisoning myself by free will ever! Read more Lou Reed and Metallica – Lulu (2011)
Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto (2011)
Coldplay featuring Rihanna is not a nightmare or worst case scenario, but it’s actually quite occurred in “Princess of China”, one of the 14 new songs of the fifth studio album by Coldplay, “Mylo Xyloto”. And don’t matter what, after all these years and efforts, Coldplay are still not U2. “Charlie Brown” for instance, taste like U2, but it isn’t. Chris Martin might never reach the charm of Bono, but his struggling and trying.
The previous album, “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends”, in 2008, established a recording HQ at a disused bakery in Primrose Hill, North London, where they recorded, but Coldplay relocated to a vacant church, also in north London, to work on their new album in collaboration with Brian Eno. “Mylo Xyloto” seems to be a concept album. According to Chris Martin, the album is “based on a love story with a happy ending.”, in which the two protagonists: Mylo and Xyloto, are living in an oppressive, dystopian urban environment, meet one another through a gang called “The Lost Boys”, and fall in love. Lyrically, the album is inspired by “old school American graffiti” and “the White Rose Movement”, and Martin also said that the album was influenced by HBO TV series “The Wire.” Musically, Coldplay have stated that they want this album to be “more acoustic” and “more intimate” than its predecessor. And here we go, we’ve got “Mylo Xyloto”, set for official release on 24 October 2011. Read more Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto (2011)
Tom Waits – Bad As Me (2011)
It’s been seven years since “Real Gone” (2004) and ladies and gentlemen, Tom Waits are back and he’s brutally fresh. “Chicago” is a noisy opening track with garage rock pulse and horn-fueled cabaret rock after-taste and the whole album flows glowing and pumping, it’s like a radiography of Wait’s whole career and his best moments projected into the future. If “alternative” and “avant-garde” rock actually means something, then Tom Waits makes sense. Nowadays nothing means anything and nothing make sense, except commercials and music is nothing, but ultimately additional accessory to our iPods. And this is the world we use to say we’re against, but we’re accept it. Tom Waits said sometimes ago: “Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car”, and he added: “I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.”
There’s no room for artificial intellectual bullshit, for faking alternatives. If you don’t actually feel it, better… “Get Lost”. 😀 Read more Tom Waits – Bad As Me (2011)
This Year’s Girl – Personal Ghosts (2011)
As much as I hate labels and boxes, genre classification, I had to admit that in a busy world with mainly superficial relations and all things done in the hurry, music became part of our outfit, mainly nothing but a background buzz coming from our iPod (or something) to cover up all the other noises around us and isolate us definitively from the rest of the world. Yeah, you’re gonna say I’m mean and probably you’re right, but still, I’m telling you facts. Music is only an additional part of your iPod and the iPod is just another fancy gadget incorporated in your daily dress code. Music is nothing more than your key ring, it’s one click away on the internet or you can buy it from the supermarket.
With all the internet (and press-kit I received) I didn’t managed to dig out too much about This Year’s Girl and if I’ll tell you this is some kind of pop-rock you’re probably will think of some sort of freak, half Madonna, half god knows what and that, my friends, it’s not quite true, actually it’s pretty far from reality. Eventually This Year’s Girl reminds me of the Americans OK Go and the British The Enemy or a mixture of this two bands and “Personal Ghosts” is an album with excellent vibe and a few extremely catch songs. Read more This Year’s Girl – Personal Ghosts (2011)
Jane’s Addiction – The Great Escape Artist (2011)
Nothing’s shocking: Perry Farrell at age 52 is not that restless, rebellious rock and roll singer anymore as he was almost three decades ago when his band, Psi Com. metamorphosed into Jane’s Addiction. Original bass player and former member Eric Avery rejoined the band in 2008, but departing again in 2010, so he was replaced by Chris Chaney, after initially they worked for nine months on the new album with Velvet Revolver and former Guns’N’Roses bass player Duff McKagan. McKagan joined enthusiast and seems to left disappointed. Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio was brought in to writing and recording the album and the result is kind of TV on the Radio featuring Porno for Pyros – Farrell’s post Jane’s Addiction band between ’92-’98… Unfortunately. But it might work quite alright as a soundtrack for a movie about an aging rock star or lonesome mid-age unemployee.
Farrell said: “It’s a strange mixture of that post-punk Goth darkness that Jane’s had, with what’s going on today with groups like Muse and Radiohead. As much as I want to appease fans and make old Jane’s fans love me, I just can’t help myself from moving forward.” And “The Great Escape Artist” actually sounds like a toothless Jane’s Addiction lost into a cinematic post-rock soundscape with few sparking reminiscences of tasteless, so-called alternative rock cliches collected. Kind of exactly what against Jane’s Addiction was about. Minimalist and gloomy, Farrell seems to delivered a possible self-portrait and the portrait of the confused man caught in the midlife crises and lost in the strange and desperate times we’re living nowadays. Read more Jane’s Addiction – The Great Escape Artist (2011)
