Random Music Thoughts

[RPS]

Here is my ranking of De La Soul

8-7: Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump and AOI Bionix: These albums are tied at 7-8 and if you asked me to differentiate between the two, I could not. De La Soul have 8 albums and they can clearly be divided into two camps - their early work and their later work which is influenced heavily by guests. This album is very evident of that. I would not describe the music inside as bad or even average. It is good. I actually listened to both albums twice  It was easy to listen to, but after I was left more of an impression with the guests herein rather than it being a work that continued on what they started on their first four albums 

6: and the Anonymous Nobody...: When you look at the guests on this album, there is a lot of potential there. Snoop Dogg, Little Dragon, Damon Albarn, Justin Hawkins, Usher, David Bryne. This album was released in 2016, but felt like an album from mid 2000s. It was not bad per se. Nothing just stood out to me. When I listen to albums, when a track stands out to me, I add it to a playlist or go back and listen to things that stood out to me. I went back and listened to nothing. It was incredible listenable, but not memorable.  

5: The Grind Date: I very much enjoyed this album, but again it felt more like a show case of all the guests. The beats were incredible though. J Dilla and Madlib were all over the production tracklist, which makes sense. You can feel again that it feels influenced by the guests and the prodcuers. A solid listen to, but I doubt I would go out of my way to listen to anything they released. 

4. Stakes Is High: This album feels like the beginning of second half of De La Soul, where instead of innovating and thinking outside of the box, they feel like they are taking a victory lap. That said, this album is very good. Yes, there are guests, but even on a track like the Bizness, it felt like a De La Soul song where Common guests. It is breezy, fun, and insightful. 

3. Buhloone Mindstate: So going into this, I was like "well, it will be their first two albums and everything else" and wow I was hit hard by Buhloone Mindstate. Not enough to overtake the top two albums, but definitely enough that I would move this onto on my regular rotation of albums. It feels much looser, more free, more liberated. I think this is largely in part because of the jazz inspiration. I don't think it is merely that there is jazz aspects to the songs. It feels like an album that is not constrained by expectations. Tracks unexpectantly shift gears and head in different directions. It is interesting to listen to this album, because while I think the first two albums are superior, you can absolutely see how influential this album is with alternative hip hop. You can see the DNA of Jurassic 5, Danny Brown, or the Roots. 

2. De La Soul Is Dead: The only reason that this album is lower than 3 Feet is because it feels less like a cohesive album at times. The skits feel out of place and a bit out of place with the flow of things. However, it is an amazing tour de force of a hip hop album. Goofy, insightful, poignant, innovative and referential all at the same time, even in the same song. 

1. 3 Feet High and Rising: This is the perfect album for a Saturday morning. Every track is unique, blends into the next and has perfect skits between the album holding it together. I think there are better "songs" on Dead, but what is perfect about 3 Feet High and Rising is how it feels as an experience from front to end. The Magic Number is a fantastic song, but it feels perfect as the album opener and it blends so seamlessly right into the next track. A perfect album. 

Taking any suggestions for who I should chart next... 

[The Buscher]

Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell is in hospice care and given days to live following kidney failure.

[RPS]

Here is what I have been liking 

James Blake - Playing Robots into Heaven: really good album. A return to his roots as a dance producer. Still lots of pensive thoughts and moody ambience. But also lots of interesting ideas in the songs. 

Jaimie Branch - fly or die fly or die fly or die ((world war)): this is a post humorous release from a renowned trumpeter. I had never heard of her before this album, but this album is extraordinary. If forced to assign a genre to it, it would be jazz but that undersells it. It is in so many ways undefined by genre, expectation and convention. There are elements of so many genres of music. It feels like a landmark album that will influence artists in the future and continue the trend of disregarding genres and boundaries. A track can feel like hip hop, jazz, punk and dance simultaneously while also bearing no resemble to those individual genres in a describable way. Without question in album of the year question - potentially will be in album of the decade contention. 

Jungle - Volcano: you'll throw this album and you won't even notice it's over. There are lots of smoke and mirrors to evoke a feeling rather than coming up with something original. But sugar sweet melodies, interesting vocals and just being listenable can be acceptable. Nothing everything needs to change the world. 

Jeff Rosenstock- HELLMODE: I see a Jeff Rosenstock album, I listen. It's clockwork. Pop punk for the anxious 30 something who want deep and introspective song writing. Well... at least relative to other pop punk songs that can often times be shallow. On HELLMODE, the screams and the rush of noises are scaled back for a softer tone. It's my sons favorite album in a while.

Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS: This is all I'll be listening to for the next several months. My oldest daughter is going to love this album. When I listened to Sour, I was astounded by the songwriting behind the album and enjoyed the pop soda confection of rock, pop and punk. On GUTS, the songwriting is stronger and the pop soda has far more punk in the mix. There is not ten songwriters on each track - mostly Olivia and Dan Nigro. It shows. Its all Olivia's vision. She's angry, having fun, writing "my life sucks" on a binder with a sharpie while her best friend applies black nail polish. She's waiting at the mall food court for her dad to pick her up with her bag full of shoplifted nail polish and eye liners. She so accurately depicts the independence, liberation and regret of youth. 

[Benji]

Cannot figure out for the life of me why U2 have just stolen "Call Me" by Blondie and changed it minimally then called it "Atomic City" rather than just... covering "Call Me". It's so dumb.

[VerbalPuke]

10 hours ago, Benji said:

Cannot figure out for the life of me why U2 have just stolen "Call Me" by Blondie and changed it minimally then called it "Atomic City" rather than just... covering "Call Me". It's so dumb.

Also odd is that Blondie has a fairly well known song called Atomic. 

[Benji]

15 minutes ago, VerbalPuke said:

Also odd is that Blondie has a fairly well known song called Atomic. 

So I looked into it, apparently it's an ode to Las Vegas (where they're doing residency) being the Atomic City and they 100% note that it's Call Me by Blondie and they even give credits. Which still baffles me, because just cover Call Me outright, it's a great song.

[METALMAN]

If I were U2 and wanted to do a Las Vegas song I'd just put out City of Blinding Lights Again and save a bit of time.

[Colly]

EWB musos, why does a 7" single I recently bought play fine on one side but slow down and speed up on the other? My record player is cheap and nasty so I acknowledge that may contribute, but seems odd it's only one side?

[METALMAN]

I’d give the record a clean and if that doesn’t do anything I’d assume it’s a manufacturing defect.

[Skummy]

yeah, could be a mispress, if one half of the record is off-centre or otherwise not manufactured correctly. 

If just dusting it off doesn't help, when I worked in a record shop we used a quick spray of window cleaner and a cloth to carefully clean records, and that usually did the trick if the issue was with dust and dirt. I've seen some places advise against using it, but usually because they have their own cleaning products to sell you.

[Colly]

Thanks both. I'm going to test it on a better player then whinge if still bad. Bought at a gig though so not convinced I'll get far, it's a split single of Ash and The Subways covering each others "Oh Yeah"s, thankfully it's the Ash side that works. I'm so old.

[METALMAN]

The Subways played at my freshers week! I'm also old.

[Colly]

The weird thing is (and I realise I should be cross posting this in the gigs thread) that I hadn't seen Ash live in 20 years, but in my head that was still "late period" Ash when they were touring their 3rd album and I was just clinging on to being a teenager. They'd at that point only really been touring 10 years and by the daft fact they'd started at school they were only in their mid 20s then. Absurd they've been around this long and are still only in their mid 40s.

I saw the Subways at our local indie club night in about 2005/6, when you could pay £5 in and there'd inexplicably always be a band that 2 years later would be semi massive (Razorlight, Bloc Party, Editors, even The Killers). They're younger than me. Jerks.

[VerbalPuke]

5 hours ago, Colly said:

EWB musos, why does a 7" single I recently bought play fine on one side but slow down and speed up on the other? My record player is cheap and nasty so I acknowledge that may contribute, but seems odd it's only one side?

Is one side pressed at 33 RPM and one pressed at 45 RPM (which eould be weird not sure if possible)? Did you adjust anything on the player?

[Colly]

No, when it's going it's fine, the turntable is literally slowing down and speeding up, it's very strange.

[VerbalPuke]

2 hours ago, Colly said:

No, when it's going it's fine, the turntable is literally slowing down and speeding up, it's very strange.

Could be that the belt in it is bad. Turntables are direct or belt driven. Sometimes when the belt goes bad you run into these sorta problems.

[Colly]

Works fine on my brothers. Might have to finally upgrade.

[METALMAN]

Odd that the turntable works on one side though. Not that I know much about these things (when I worked at HMV I almost got fired because someone grassed on me for writing a militantly anti-vinyl blog), but it seems weird that it would do that.

[Skummy]

5 hours ago, METALMAN said:

(when I worked at HMV I almost got fired because someone grassed on me for writing a militantly anti-vinyl blog)

incredible new metalman lore just dropped

[RPS]

I liked his comment as I received my new vinyl. What does that say about me?